Go the whole hog
You can go for weeks feeling pretty sure there are no foxes around, and then suddenly the hairs on the back of your neck start to tingle. It’s a kind of foxing sixth sense – you just know a fox has moved in. Before long you start hearing the odd report from farm workers and villagers: “I think I saw something slipping down the hedge,” or “There was a fresh fox scat on the track this morning.”
That’s what happened on my farm just recently. I wasn’t at all surprised, as Colin the keeper had just put the partridges out in their pens in each cover, which is bound to attract any fox that’s within scenting distance. We put our birds down late here, because we like to wait until we’ve done the harvest and finished the autumn drilling. It means we start later than many other shoots, but it suits us.
We haven’t caught up with this fox yet, but it has
