Lamping the night away, August 2009

johngalway · 28-08-2009 11:54pm #1

Friday, August 28th, 2009.

Last year I think I was out with the shotgun once, I mean what's the point in having one if that trend is going to continue? It's not as if I don't enjoy using it, in fact it's my favourite way of foxing by a wide margin. So, tonight the rifle stays locked in the cabinet. I suspect that may remain the case for a while too.

Once I could no longer make out the outline of the trees against the sky from the back window it was time to get moving. I'd already got the lamp & battery, shotgun, caller and ammo belt out and prepared. Eley BB's with a fibre wad are tonight’s flavour. Can't honestly remember if they're 34gram or 36gram, either way I know they'll do the job. Shotgun is a Baikal MP-153, semi automatic with a full aftermarket choke in.

From the bottom of my own land looking up towards the hill the wind is quartering in my face left to right (if that makes sense!). It's breezy but I want to put emphasis on walking quietly, good habits and all, start as you mean to go on!

I don't see anything in my place so I hop across the fenced wall into the neighbours. I check the neighbouring field from across the wall and see nothing. Where I am there is a large hill, with a flat area about two hundred yards long which rises up to the hill proper. Always been a good spot for me. I've the rabbit in distress call on low volume for about fifteen minutes. I see two sets of eyes on the side of the hill moving together, I never found out what they were.

I think that's enough calling and off goes the caller. I intend to hang around for fifteen or twenty minutes. A far off fox may have heard it and be coming my way, no sense in wasting the batteries now is there. After about five minutes I see a bright pair of eyes look down towards me from the wall which separates this piece of land from the hill above. Game on.

I move forward slowly, taking the caller from my pocket. I turn on the same call again and drop the caller in the low gorse bush beside me. The idea being my fox will want an easy meal and I get to intercept it on it’s way down. I’d say I walked forward about eighty or ninety yards, all the time the fox is meandering it’s way down towards the call.

I was surprised in that it didn’t try to wind the call and move into the field next door. I took up a position against the corner of a wall of a derelict shed, basically only the four stone walls left there now. The fox was about fifty yards out when I rested the shotgun on my left forearm. I was lining up the gun with the beam from the lamp. Forty yards, thirty yards, into a drain around 25 and as it came on clear ground I pulled the trigger and dropped it.

This years vixen, which was unfortunate I thought. I’d have preferred to shoot an older fox really. Still she won’t be taking any hens or lambs next spring.