My wish that my next foxes were not going to take as long came true. My ex-workmate, Kev, called me up to say that his old school friend, Jim, had invited us to shoot foxes in the Parkes area of NSW. Was I interested – of course. The drive is a bit over 5 hours West from Sydney and we left early enough in the morning to be able to do some shooting that evening. The property has both crops and sheep and the foxes have been known to attack the lambs. According to some literature I found, in uncontrolled areas foxes have been shown to cause lamb losses of 10% to 30%. Under extreme conditions, predation on lambs can be as high as 50%. With the value of lambs at between AUD$100 and $140 that can add up to some serious financial loss for the owner.
The owner of the property is a lady in her 80s. She works most days on the land and is still impressively cluey and practical. Being school holidays she had the grandkids around. I used to be pretty smug that I could drive a manual car by the time I was 14 but was impressed to see the grandkids could drive a wide variety of farm machinery at an even younger age. There were a number of interesting pieces of equipment laying around the place such as old tractors, cars and Furphy tanks (a part of Australian history). For the first time I saw a wheat heater. It is a heater with storage chamber and a little auger to continuously feed wheat (rather plentiful on a farm) into the flame.
Jim had previously made up a shooting bench (as per photo below) which could be mounted on one of the flatbed 4 wheel drives so we could spotlight the foxes. Being winter here and having a cloudless evening it was going to be a cold night on the back of the truck. Kev opted to drive and Jim and I had the rifles and spotlight up top. Jim had his 22-250 and I had my 204.
Jim was kind enough to let me have first crack at a fox and unfortunately I missed that one. Not long afterwards we picked up a fox on the back side of one of the dams. This time I didn’t miss. It was a nice vixen (see photo) and it dropped instantly when hit with the 204. We moved the carcass away from the water and moved on. We alternated on the shots and that evening had 6 confirmed kills on foxes. Jim had picked up a few more foxes in the days before we arrived so the total was coming along nicely. About 2am the spotlight failed so we decided to call it an evening. We were also getting cold as it was about 2°C (about 35°F). We set up our sleeping gear in the shearer’s shed and went to sleep.
Mug shot of me with one of the foxes and although there was no frost it was cold enough on the top of the truck that I needed the fingerless gloves and the balaclava.
The last supper - We found this fox feeding on a sheep carcass before Jim took it down with the 22-250.
Kev had recently decided to add a varmint rifle to his collection of guns. He was tossing up between the 22-250 and the 204 after having tried mine. He went to the dark side with a beautiful Sako in the classic 22-250 topped off with a Burris eliminator scope. He collected it the day before we went to the property and was unable to have any range time with it. It was a very windy day but we went out to one of the paddocks to run it in and zero the scope. He said the gun shop had put it all together before it left the store so we were right to go. I was having trouble keeping the groups tight and couldn’t work out why until I checked the mounts and found they were loose. After that the groups were far tighter. Kev then demolished a water bottle at 200 yards so it was zeroed in for our purposes. We didn’t get the chance to check the drop at 750 yards as per the Burris instructions.
That evening I elected to drive while Kev and Jim shot. We found a fox early on and Kev took that with his new 22-250. Dropped instantly at a range of 117 yards according to the scope. A little later that evening Kev hurt his knee slightly manoeuvring out of the bench so I took his place. The temperature that evening was a few degrees warmer than the night before and was almost pleasant. Jim was a font of knowledge about the fox so I had the opportunity to learn something while shooting. At one stage Jim scored the feral cat shown below. I think in Australia they are even more unpopular than the foxes. This country has no natural feline predators and the defence mechanisms used by the fauna don’t work well against such a capable hunter as a cat. We alternated shots for the rest of the evening and picked up a confirmed 14 foxes. We probably scored more but in the stubble and grass patches the carcass can be difficult to find at times. We knew where one dead fox was and still managed to drive past it at a distance of a meter before back tracking to find it.
By the start of the third evening my confirmed total for the trip was 9 and I really wanted to hit double figures. Jim was once again kind enough to let me have first shot at a fox a little further away than most of our shots. I heard the hit and saw the fox rear up and dive through the fence in one jump. We couldn’t find it at that time so I didn’t count it (Jim found it after we left). Jim picked up a few more and then I scored number 10 for me. If you look in the attached photos you can see how the colour of the fox can blend in with the reddish soil and some of the brown grass and crop stubble. if you look closely at the first photo you get an idea at how reflective the foxes eyes are. As we were leaving the next day we finished slightly earlier and were very grateful that the grandkids had made a fantastic fire to sit around at the end of the shooting session.
By the end of the few nights spotlighting we’d reduced the fox numbers by at least 40 foxes between the 3 of us. I know that it is not the most sporting way of hunting but it is effective. If you assumed that over its life each fox took 2 lambs then that is a potential 80 lambs saved and at a minimum of $100 per lamb that is $8,000 for the farmer. Each vixen will generally produce 4 young a year so there was a secondary benefit of reducing the population of the next generation. The property owner was pleased with the results and we have an invite to come back. All in all it was an awesome long weekend away from which I'll have plenty of good memories. I was also very impressed at how effective the 204 was on foxes. When I did my part right it was not taking prisoners and dropped pretty well every one on the spot. The entry wounds were not easily picked and on body shots there were no exit wounds.
