Foxes: an everyday story of life and death in the wild

By Martin Scott

HOW long can a red fox live? I believe that the ripest old age a tame fox might achieve is 12. A wild country fox could reach about eight. The governing factor, of course, apart from predators, is the fox’s teeth. No teeth, no food, no energy, and the end will be near, perhaps by scavenging dog or internal parasite—a death neither quick nor noble, and without Nature’s own equivalent of the National Health Service.

When I was hunting the Tiverton in Devon, the oldest fox caught by my hounds was aged six, according to that great naturalist Sir Newton Rycroft. It was the Tiverton’s first hunt in the New Forest, in 1975, and the fox’s incisors were long, very curved and extremely dark—which prompted the discussion. The longer and more curved the teeth, the older the fox. Bob Street, who had disappeared into a bog during the excitement of the run, said that in 40 years’ hunting it was one of the oldest he had seen hounds catch.

A survey showed that 25% of foxes hunted in the 2003 season in England and Wales were dispatched, 100% of them killed outright, since hounds never wound. Their age varied from country to country, but on average one-third were between nine and 18 months of age, when virtually full-grown. Those which get away then are likely to live considerably longer, since they have already begun to use their wits and test their physiques. These, the strong, healthy, clever ones, will therefore live to breed, thus perpetuating the best genes.

Another old fox I have hunted was a bob-tailed vixen living in Flisteridge Wood, a good covert owned by Mrs Pitman in the VWH country. This wily fox escaped capture by running round the covert until hounds changed on to one of her siblings, or, later, her nephews and nieces (family loyalty was not a strong point). This usually occurred when I was hunting the mixed pack.

I recall the Prince of Wales seeing her cross a ride and remarking that she resembled a member of his family’s dogs. That was a day when she got away again. When at last she was caught (by the mixed pack) we were all rather sad. Locals said she was at least six, perhaps seven, and she had lost most of her teeth, so we saved her from a winter of hardship. Sidney Bailey, the country’s longest-serving professional huntsman, who retired at the end of last season, says that only 1% of foxes caught by the VWH hounds reached this age, and some still had a tooth or two, though they were in poor condition.

Cuthbert Bradley, in his book ‘The Foxhound of the Twentieth Century’, mentions a seven-year-old fox with half its teeth missing and ‘the grey hairs of experience’. I remember this fox well. It was caught in 1913 during the North Cotswold Mastership of Mr C T Scott, my great-uncle. He had the mounted mask hung in one of his rooms at Buckland.

Martin Letts, who hunted the College Valley hounds for 40 seasons, says they caught fewer old foxes in recent years. ‘One of the reasons there were better hunts in yesteryear is that the modern ration of seasoned foxes in full prime is lower today because of culling other than hunting.’ According to Letts, fox numbers increase by 400% in spring (during the then close season for hunting, but not, of course, for other control methods). This number is then reduced by road traffic accidents, lack of food, shooting and snaring, and, when the season reopened in autumn, by hunting, so that in the following spring the numbers were back to what they were.

Spring is traditionally also ‘lamb call’ time, when hard-pressed farmers call in the Hunt to save their young stock from rogue foxes. A ‘rogue’ is one which preys on farm stock, not only for food but also, it seems, for pleasure; what other explanation can there be when only tails, ears and noses are chewed off, and the lamb is left otherwise whole? Most rogue foxes are not born, but made, undergoing a change in character after injury—generally by road accidents, or after being shot. At first, they probably need the easy meat offered by lambs. That seems to give them a taste for the sport.

Lamb call is a serious business. Tensions rise as farmers become incensed by their losses, and huntsmen are up before dawn with a few seasoned hounds, trying to find and kill the culprits. The Tiverton’s then huntsman Tony Holdsworth (now at the Duke of Beaufort’s) recalls one particularly bad spring for rogues. Hounds killed 17 of them, and only two had been fit and well. The rest were carrying injuries ranging from broken bones in road accidents, to shotgun wounds, new and old.

When wounded, most foxes go straight to ground, there to recover or die, which is why they are seldom seen in the countryside. This was well illustrated in Lucy Whaley’s article in Hunting Magazine on the infamous new anti-hunting laws in Scotland, when the Berwickshire Hunt reported a fox being shot, bowled over, shot again, and then disappearing down a badger sett, presumably to die, eventually, from its wounds.

Martin Letts believes hunting accounted for 15% of the annual reduction in the fox population. It differs from the other forms of control in being selective, and producing no injured foxes (and of course no ‘rogues’). This also contributes to the genetic quality of the fox species—survival of the fittest—which other forms of control fail to do. The Burns Inquiry into hunting approved of ‘lamping’ foxes in the dark, but it seems to me that many more pregnant and mothering vixens are shot—and many more cubs are left to die—from this (pregnant vixens, carrying no scent, are left alone by foxhounds). Lamping is non-selective, and not always fatal.

A fox which was hunted by the Tiverton near Creacombe illustrates this. It soon went to ground, was dug out, and humanely destroyed. It transpired that this fox had been shot by rifle through its stomach, and maggots were living off it. For this to occur, it must have been injured several weeks earlier. A gamekeeper who witnessed it could hardly believe that the fox was still alive.

Rodney Ellis, Master and huntsman at the Tedworth, caught a six-year-old fox at the West Norfolk which had only a few teeth left, all down one side of its jaw. A big, rangy fox, it was very lean, for obvious reasons, and would have starved if hounds had not caught it. Ellis says most foxes caught by hounds are aged between 18 months and two years. On average, four foxes caught each season by his hounds had been shot by rifle, and had suffered for up to two weeks.

Roger Bigland, a hunting countryman for 39 years in the Cotswold Hills, knows his subject so well that Dr David MacDonald invited him to help with his fox surveys for Oxford University. Bigland says that rural foxes can live to eight, but seldom do so. He agrees with Martin Letts that fewer good strong foxes are around today, because of traffic kills and increased culling by methods other than hunting. He recalls an incident in late-spring, when he had been told of a fox killed by a car, and he went to tidy up the mess.

He found the dead vixen in a council gutter by the road, with her cubs still trying to suckle. He picked her up, and the cubs ran back under a wall. Having put the carcass in his van, he returned to see what else could be done, and saw in his torch beam the dog fox in the field just over the wall. Next morning he returned, to discover that the dog fox had taken his seven-week cubs to the Hunt covert nearby. They survived, and he watched them grow up. It is often said by hunting people that they are the ones who care most about the welfare of foxes; it happens to be true.