I was getting a severe case of cabin fever, so I decided to get on my hunting duds and head out to do some scouting and maybe make a calling stand or two on the afternoon of Monday, January 5, 2009. I left Williston around 2:45 p.m.
There sure was a lot of snow in the ditches and on the side roads. As I got to the approach I needed to use to get into the area I wanted to call, I could see that I wasn’t going to drive more than 20 yards off the main road. I opened the gate, drove my pickup in and parked it and shut the gate. I gathered up my backpack, took my Savage 12VLP in .204 Ruger out of the soft case and chambered a shell and put the safety on. I got my shooting sticks and my home-made tripod, donned the two white ski masks and white gloves and headed east down the snow-covered prairie trail. There were several places where the snow was hard and I could stay on top of it and then I’d break through into snow up to my knees. I was cussing myself out for not remembering to bring along my snow shoes!!! What a dummy!!!
I walked in off the main road about 150 yards and decided I wasn’t going to make it very far in this deep snow without the snow shoes, so I picked a spot just over the crest of a hill to set my rifle down. I had a real clear view of everything to the south, southeast, east and a fairly good clear view to the ENE. My view to the north was very limited, but the road was back behind me to the west, so there shouldn't be many animals coming in that way.
I took my FX5 out of my backpack and trudged quietly down the fence line about 30 yards and hung the caller on a wooden fence post. The call was situated well below the spot I would be watching from. I aimed the front speaker to the SSE, which was the direction the wind was coming from. I got the remote turned on and the caller turned on and got it muted. I crept back up to my calling spot and lay down on my 3 mil white plastic trash compactor bag. That bag sure keeps me dry and in spite of it being plastic, it doesn’t make a whole lot of noise if you are careful.
I selected the DSG Cottontail Distress sound, set the volume control at 13 and let it rip. I could barely hear the call, but I knew that any predators in the area would be able to pick up on that sound just fine. I fully expected a coyote to come in from the southeast where I could see several pheasants out in a stubble field feeding away.
I spotted a predator coming in from the NNE. It turned out to be a red fox and about 2 minutes into the stand it was around 100 yards away from me and then it just turned around and ran back the way it had come in. A few seconds later I discovered why it ran away. A second red fox was coming in from below a hill directly to the north of me. I didn’t know it was there until I saw the little black ears bobbing up and down just over the ridge. I finally saw its head, but it too did a 180 degree turn and ran away before I could get a shot.
The first fox had stopped about 225 yards to the NNE of me and sat there while the other fox ran away. I finally decided I better take the shot. Heck, I hit prairie dogs at 250 to 300 yards away and this is a BIG fox sitting only about 225 to 250 yards away. I cranked the power ring on my Leupold VX-III 6.5-20x40mm long range scope up to 20 power. He was sitting kind of quartering to me with his left front shoulder closer to me than his right shoulder. I tried to hold a little left of his left shoulder and I squeezed off the shot. I could hear the bullet hit with a big WHAP!!! I had hit the left front edge of the left shoulder bone and tore a fair sized hole in the fox when the 39 gr. Sierra BlitzKing hit. The fox just just went limp and slumped forward a bit. I used my Leica 1200 range finder and the fox was 220 yards away from my calling spot. Total calling time until the shot, about 4 minutes 30 seconds!!!
It took me 20 minutes to walk the 220 yards from my calling spot to the fox. The snow down in those bushes in front of the rifle barrel in the photo above was about 4 feet deep and soft. I had to work hard to get across the nearly 75 yards of deep snow. I took a different path on the way back and it only took me 20 minutes to get all the way from where the fox lay back to the pickup. It was still a tough walk. It would have been a lot easier if “dummy me†would have remembered to take my snow shoes along!!! Next time I’ll remember.
Here’s a “Hero Photo†with my Savage 12VLP in .204 Ruger and the nice red fox. You'll have to take my word for it that it IS ME inside the ski mask!!!
Here’s a little better view of the fox. Really nice deep red coat. It was a male and I'm guessing from the looks of his teeth and the size of him he was probably one of the young born last spring. He weighed 10 pounds when I got him home. He had lost quite a bit of blood though!
Here’s a view that has you looking from where the fox lay back up to the fence line on the hill where I was set up. If you squint real hard, you can see a fence post just left of the tip of the arrow. I was a few feet behind that post.
I loaded the fox in the back of the pickup and drove up north several miles and scouted out some of my other calling areas. There’s no way I’m going to be able to drive my pickup to any of those spots and even my 4-WD ATV won’t take me into those spots. There’s just too much snow. I would need a snowmobile to get into those places and I don’t think I want to own one of those.
I got home around 5:50 p.m. and hung the fox up in the garage and took my wife out for supper. Fur prices aren't real good around here so I think I’ll donate the fox to the hides for pheasant food drive.
