Sunday April 18th

What with my course, travelling, farming and shooting I've not been getting much shut eye. A couple of nights ago a ewe had twins on part of my Dads farm. All was well, good ewe with plenty of milk for them, as they'd been fed for the past while after our disaster of a winter. Lambs were up and about and sucking.

Then this happened.



And this...



I rang my shooting buddy John, we agreed it must be a dog fox. Thinking a vixen would bring the entire lamb/s off with her for either her own cubs or a relations cubs. I figure the ewe left the lambs asleep to graze and our villain knocked them off at the one time, instead of killing one and returning for the other.

We had been out here already (same night as that ewe had the twins), as a ewe had turned up at the trough for feed with blood about her tail, but, no lamb in tow and none to be found in that part of the farm. Stayed out until the juice went in the batteries, and saw zilch.

Tonight the plan is to be on station for 11.30pm, and stretch out into the night as long as we can. We didn't think our fox was coming early. Conditions are brutal for shotgun, which is what John uses. It's too calm, too bright, and the ground doesn't make it possible to move silently. So, John is the night beater really, not bothered about making noise, walking about to rise a fox in my direction or keep an eye on places I can't see then signal me.

I'd picked out my spot for tonight during the daytime. It gave me a pretty much 300° view around the hillock I was on. In front of me there's a path running left right with fox scat on it, to my left there's a path running towards me with scat on it. To my right I can see a long small ridge and a marsh. Behind me, I can't see much, but John is the other side of that hillock so it's covered too.

After the usual goings on, getting cold, bored, fed up, watching John's lamp move about, turning ewes eyes into foxes eyes for the third time I spot what I'm looking for. It's 1.18am, so we've been there just under fifty minutes. There's a set of eyes cresting the ridge off to my right, walking on towards me through the neighbours land which is in the middle of all our land. The fox comes on along the fence, crosses through it and then another and turns to the left as I'm looking at it.

While watching this I've moved 20-30 yards towards the fox and can go no farther due to the marsh. It's not at all bothered by the lamp thank God. As I settle for the shot it stops beside a large rock and the Mr. Hornadys deadly, accurate & dependable Vmax removes this lamb killer from the farm. I never did range it, probably between 150 - 200 yards somewhere, dog fox with a lower K9 missing, broken off some how.



That's one down. Two more foxes to be accounted for on Dad's farm yet, both suspects in missing lambs, as well as two neighbours with fox predation problems, God knows when we'll have the time to get to them! Nothing coming easy this year !!