fox cubs,

whitser

i went to a farm i hunt regular during the winter for fox. its always a good spot for a hunt. any way went up last night with the springer and side-side for 2 things, too shoot some bunnies and to see if there were any foxes knocking around for the coming winter.
plenty of rabbits, shot 3 and a pigeon. i headed up along a ditch where i know there's earths. and low and behold there was 2 cubs out playing in the field. i heeled up the dog and cos the wind was right i got within 20 yards of them, even got a nice pic on the camera. watched them for a few mins then they sussed all was not right and scarppered. im chuffed to see them on my permission, so i left them a small rabbit and they pigeon. will post the pic when i get on the home computer.

stevoman

whitser wrote: »

i went to a farm i hunt regular during the winter for fox. its always a good spot for a hunt. any way went up last night with the springer and side-side for 2 things, too shoot some bunnies and to see if there were any foxes knocking around for the coming winter.
plenty of rabbits, shot 3 and a pigeon. i headed up along a ditch where i know there's earths. and low and behold there was 2 cubs out playing in the field. i heeled up the dog and cos the wind was right i got within 20 yards of them, even got a nice pic on the camera. watched them for a few mins then they sussed all was not right and scarppered. im chuffed to see them on my permission, so i left them a small rabbit and they pigeon. will post the pic when i get on the home computer.

Great to see them. cant wait to see the pics!

Vegeta

hope you can get the pics up, looking forward to it

foxshooter243

Good man whitser, planning some spotting trips myself at the minute.

F-ClassWillie

whitser wrote: »

i went to a farm i hunt regular during the winter for fox. its always a good spot for a hunt. any way went up last night with the springer and side-side for 2 things, too shoot some bunnies and to see if there were any foxes knocking around for the coming winter.
plenty of rabbits, shot 3 and a pigeon. i headed up along a ditch where i know there's earths. and low and behold there was 2 cubs out playing in the field. i heeled up the dog and cos the wind was right i got within 20 yards of them, even got a nice pic on the camera. watched them for a few mins then they sussed all was not right and scarppered. im chuffed to see them on my permission, so i left them a small rabbit and they pigeon. will post the pic when i get on the home computer.

Listen, whistler when they become older, greater the menace you know, still have to pull the trigger or are yeah getting soft!:(

whitser

not soft. just love foxes. and i'll be out after them with my hounds come late august-sept. im love seeing foxes in the wild, wether its hunting season or not. for some the only good fox is a dead one. but most hunters,especially hound and terrier men respect and admire auld renard.

foxhunter

F-ClassWillie wrote: »

Listen, whistler when the become older the menace you know, still
have to pull the trigger or are yeah getting soft!:(

+1 Id have to agree im afraid "plonk them when you see them":D

pvt.joker

foxhunter wrote: »

+1 Id have to agree im afraid "plonk them when you see them":D

no respect for nature at all?

:mad:

Wheres the challenge in shooting cubs, its cowardly.

cavan shooter

pvt.joker wrote: »

no respect for nature at all?

:mad:

Wheres the challenge in shooting cubs, its cowardly.

Pvt Joker,

There is two ways to look at this,
1. They are vermin and need to be controlled and therefore cubs are "fair game" the mother and even the father is out nightly looking for food for these cute cuddly cubs and anything goes(hens, ducks, sheep)

2. The shooting of foxes is a sport and a challenge. (that doesn't go down to well with antis and imo some farmers)

I shoot foxes to control there numbers, protect my birds and the sheep etc of neighbouring farms. I don't like shooting cubs and in general stop lamping to give everything a chance.

I also leave some foxes alone, preferring to shoot younger foxes and leave older lads, as you can, by shooting older ones create a vacuum for all the young whipper snappers to fill. In general it's a fine balance.

Shooting foxes isn't a sport, I now throw it open for debate

jwshooter

out for a jog last week and one of the dogs cought a cub when the other three came on the fight ,fox hounds would not be it with them . gwp can be savage , i came back at mid nite shot 3 more ,was there till two trying to get a shot at the last one but it went to ground iv shot two more in the last week , getting some x layers the weekend so will be giving a look around for the next few nites , as the saying goes the best time to shoot a fox is when you see em . pigoens are out of season at the moment ,must have been a feral one

Vegeta

pvt.joker wrote: »

no respect for nature at all?

:mad:

Wheres the challenge in shooting cubs, its cowardly.

No respect for nature! Really what have you done for your local eco system lately? Not a bloody thing i'll bet.

Fox numbers are so great that they are moving into towns. Is that as nature intended? Have you seen natures cure to over crowding, disease and starvation. Much crueler than any well placed bullet.

Cowardly, ignobly timid and faint-hearted, how does shooting cubs make it cowardly. Is shooting a fully grown fox brave or something?

whitser

lads want to shoot cubs, go ahead thats your business. but on my permission i'll leave them til they have a chance. lambs are fully grown now, so a vixen feeding cubs wont be bothering them. look if i got a call out i'd do whats necessary. i've culled a den of cubs before,on a call out for a gun club,but i dont enjoy it, and wont do it unless i have too.

whitser

i know gun club men kill foxes on sight to protect their birds, thats fair enough. but my sport is hunting foxes, so i like to leave them til its the season. pheasant hunters dont shoot young poults do they? i'll just be carefull not to give away my cubs location to some of the lads on here

stevoman

Vegeta wrote: »

Fox numbers are so great that they are moving into towns. Is that as nature intended? Have you seen natures cure to over crowding, disease and starvation. Much crueler than any well placed bullet.

Just to fuel the debatev veg, did nature intend towns?

stevoman

whitser wrote: »

lads want to shoot cubs, go ahead thats your business. but on my permission i'll leave them til they have a chance. lambs are fully grown now, so a vixen feeding cubs wont be bothering them. look if i got a call out i'd do whats necessary. i've culled a den of cubs before,on a call out for a gun club,but i dont enjoy it, and wont do it unless i have too.

Im have to agree with whitser, everyone to their own but also on my permission there are plenty of young foxes often walking striaght by me when i have the shotgun in hand. To be honest i dont shoot. When i am on the permission im after a few rabbits as they are plentyful and as far as i am concerned so is the fox. I dont shoot the fox becuase he is doing the very same thing i am, having a hunt after the same quarry and we have something in common that day.

the only time i do try shoot a fox is when i hide with a caller and try get him extremly close to me and get him with a bb. i do it for the challenge and of yet i havnt shot one this way. to be honest i do think then if i did get him close enough i would enjoy watching him more. i dont really have had much of a problem with foxes as i dont have a farm to worry about my stock and i was always reared in the sense that its unthinkable to shoot the uneatable. although with whitser i can understand the hunt when it comes to using hounds though as for me the excitment of using beasts instead of guns is quite enjoying and it really gets the adrenaline going. dont forget when you shoot something its dies straight away half a second and its over, but a good hunt can go on for a while (im taking this wisdom from my ferrets), or i suppose almost like that feeling of reeling in a nice trout when you catch one. thats type of feeling and excitment a gun just cant bring IMO, except maybe the right before a pheasent lifts and the dog is on set.

but again everyone to their own, thats just my opinion, its not worth thousands!

kowloon

Agriculture and bin scraps allow for an artificial rise in the population.
I once saw a fox in Trinity College, the centre of the city.

My latest sighting was looking in the kitchen window at 6:00 this morning, the cheeky fecker wanted to see if he could finish off my chickens. B@stard didn't have the common decency to sit down and wait for me to get to the cabinet and ammo. :pac:

I need to get electric fencing, feckers jump everything else.

Sparks

I once saw a fox in Trinity College, the centre of the city.

They've been a regular sight in here for decades, to be honest.

stevoman

Sparks wrote: »

They've been a regular sight in here for decades, to be honest.

are they intelligent?

Vegeta

kowloon wrote: »

I once saw a fox in Trinity College, the centre of the city.
.

I saw a few foxes in UL too, tall blondes, fit, good T&A, you know the type

kowloon

Sparks wrote: »

They've been a regular sight in here for decades, to be honest.

Know urban foxes litter the place, but when you see them in broad daylight it's still a sight!

I was working in the college at the time and was feeding cats as a favour to someone on their holidays. I saw it in a small closed in garden area, there wouldn't have been many people in and around the area.

meathstevie

kowloon wrote: »

Agriculture and bin scraps allow for an artificial rise in the population.
I once saw a fox in Trinity College, the centre of the city.

My latest sighting was looking in the kitchen window at 6:00 this morning, the cheeky fecker wanted to see if he could finish off my chickens. B@stard didn't have the common decency to sit down and wait for me to get to the cabinet and ammo. :pac:

I need to get electric fencing, feckers jump everything else.

It's a bit of razor wire you want so...:D

NoNameRanger

whitser wrote: »

plenty of rabbits, shot 3 and a pigeon. i headed up along a ditch where i know there's earths. and low and behold there was 2 cubs out playing in the field. i heeled up the dog and cos the wind was right i got within 20 yards of them, even got a nice pic on the camera. watched them for a few mins then they sussed all was not right and scarppered. im chuffed to see them on my permission, so i left them a small rabbit and they pigeon. will post the pic when i get on the home computer.

jwshooter wrote: »

pigoens are out of season at the moment ,must have been a feral one

You seem to have missed or ignored jwshooters point.
You seem to have lots of respect for your quarry i.e the Fox. Not much respect for the pigeon though, you most likely left two chicks starving in a nest and you broke the law. The season for pigeons closed on the 31st january. I doubt that you were protecting a crop at the time and to add insult to the whole thing you then just left it there for the foxes. Think before you shoot, would you do the same with a pheasant or a duck. Pigeons diserve better than that and they are a fantastic sporting bird.

jwshooter

NoNameRanger wrote: »

You seem to have missed or ignored jwshooters point.
You seem to have lots of respect for your quarry i.e the Fox. Not much respect for the pigeon though, you most likely left two chicks starving in a nest and you broke the law. The season for pigeons closed on the 31st january. I doubt that you were protecting a crop at the time and to add insult to the whole thing you then just left it there for the foxes. Think before you shoot, would you do the same with a pheasant or a duck. Pigeons diserve better than that and they are a fantastic sporting bird.

gud to see ya back

whitser

NoNameRanger wrote: »

You seem to have missed or ignored jwshooters point.
You seem to have lots of respect for your quarry i.e the Fox. Not much respect for the pigeon though, you most likely left two chicks starving in a nest and you broke the law. The season for pigeons closed on the 31st january. I doubt that you were protecting a crop at the time and to add insult to the whole thing you then just left it there for the foxes. Think before you shoot, would you do the same with a pheasant or a duck. Pigeons diserve better than that and they are a fantastic sporting bird.

to be honest it was my understanding that woodpigeon didnt have a close season. its a fair point. if i killed a rat at this time of year would you be up on your high horse? would you be giving out to lads shooting crows or magpies at this time of year.

jwshooter

whitser wrote: »

to be honest it was my understanding that woodpigeon didnt have a close season. its a fair point. if i killed a rat at this time of year would you be up on your high horse? would you be giving out to lads shooting crows or magpies at this time of year.

not the point no name was making ,you have the privilege of owning a firearm there fore you should know the laws of the land its ok for you to come along and say you did not know pigeons have a closed season ,this type of attitude is all to common and simply not good enough

Vegeta

Lads whitser seems like a very genuine bloke, now he knows pigeons are out of season. Unless he is protecting some form of crop.

Is clover a valid crop?

So I'm sure he wont willingly do it again.

foxshooter243

Vegeta wrote: »

Lads whitser seems like a very genuine bloke, now he knows pigeons are out of season. Unless he is protecting some form of crop.

Is clover a valid crop?

So I'm sure he wont willingly do it again.

have to agree vegeta, one of the problems with posting on this forum is that your post is up for dissection, and available to be taken apart by
anyone who considers themselves holier than thou.in my opinion and feel free to disagree, this forum should exist for the benefit of the shooting fraternity to pool their collective knowledge for the betterment of the sport.I myself have learned quite a lot from guys posting on the shooting forum as shooting is seeing some rapid changes at the minute and if it were not for posters such as sparks, IWM, rrpc and rovi to name but a few how in gods name could you keep up.
whitser happened to post that he shot a pigeon and was condemned for it. This to me is inherently wrong, a pm informing him should suffice as he is a fellow shooter and had no wrongful intention when he did it otherwise he wouldnt have posted would he?

" your best teacher is your last mistake!" Ralph Nader.

Vegeta

foxshooter243 wrote: »

whitser happened to post that he shot a pigeon and was condemned for it. This to me is inherently wrong, a pm informing him should suffice as he is a fellow shooter and had no wrongful intention when he did it otherwise he wouldnt have posted would he?

" your best teacher is your last mistake!" Ralph Nader.

as always foxshooter, spot on.

The more posters on here the better as the pool of knowledge gets bigger and bigger.

whitser

jwshooter wrote: »

not the point no name was making ,you have the privilege of owning a firearm there fore you should know the laws of the land its ok for you to come along and say you did not know pigeons have a closed season ,this type of attitude is all to common and simply not good enough

listen a man hasnt been born that didnt make a mistake. except you obviously.

Sparks

Whitser, that's completly true. However, this was a mistake that carries a different name in this jurisdiction - we call it a "crime". You may have heard of them.
Simple fact - it's illegal to shoot a pigeon out of season. Ignorance of that law is not a defence.
Thread closed before this gets any sillier.