Fox trapping

How long has it been since you saw the fox? Cat food should work fine... I would give it a little longer, he might just be suspicious of the area since there's something new there now.

If cat food doesn't work you could try something else meaty with a strong scent, like vienna sausages.

>>2022764
Also, just curious (not looking to start any shit,) what do you intend to do with the fox once you've trapped him?

Going to displace him somewhere far away or are you going to kill him?

If you have a chicken problem, why are you bothering to lure foxes in to eat them? You could just eat them yourself or sell them probably.

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>>2022764
Last caught him on the trail cam on the 21st. Pic related. I'll put another squirrel in the trap along with cat food for scent.
Conibears aren't the most animal-friendly traps, so he won't be getting relocated. I only use 220 conibears for fox, since they're pretty hard to catch in box traps, even when you do spend 70 +/- dollars for a large one.

>>2022775
Chicken problem as in dead chickens. The fox was lured into the trail cam so I'd know what was out there and when.

>>2022787
A foxproof run perhaps?

>>2022787
fox proof chicken pen. problem solved forever.

>>2022860
>>2022868

Inb4 op makes a million and one excuses why he can't fox-proof his coop when in reality he's just a lazy stupid asshole

>>2022872
>>2022868
>>2022860
It would be very difficult to fox-proof 3 acres. It's a goddamn wild animal.

Raw chicken breast is your best bait. But they are smart, and if your trap doesn't seem or smell right they will hang back and watch. Here they will sit in the treeline all night and let raccoons, cats, possums, everything test the bait first. Then once the trap is sprung they clean up.

>>2022915
I guess it does make a lot more sense to bait the trap with what he's coming to get. Would the trap work better if it didn't require him to walk into anything? Maybe if the bait was in a bucket or dug out spot underneath the trap, or attached to the prongs of it.

If you get rid of one fox another will just move in though.

>>2022970
I know. it does suck, but it still takes a while for another to move in. Setting a trap every one or two years is very preferable to replacing pets every week.

>>2022910
Coop. The fox isn't taking them during the day.

>>2022995
My coop itself is actually almost totally predator proof; it's about 3 feet off the ground.
Foxes generally aren't active during the day, no. But my favorite hen was still taken by a fox during the day, or at least close enough to day that my chickens hadn't come home to roost yet. My neighbor also said he used to watch a fox come down every other morning and take a chicken from the neighbors' coop. (he didn't like the neighbor, so he never said anything.) I also have seen foxes in the evening while out on walks.

How many hens anon?

Shoot the fox, get a dog and keep your chickens on a strict schedule. I have dogs anyways as pets but when every they smell or hear a fox they run up to the coop and start going ape shit. I put the chickens in before dark and do not let them out early morning.

Shooting the fox is a last resort, I like foxes but chickens grow on you, they are like pets to me I enjoy them so If a fox does sneak in past the dogs and is hanging around the coup I shoot it.

>>2022787
He's probably just suspicious of the trap then. Once he feels comfortable it'll get him.

That said, if you'll be killing him, what do you intend to do with the body? If you live near me I'll take it off your hands if you want (trying to get into taxidermy and need practice...)

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>>2023127
Fourteen.
>>2023168
I've got a dog, and even though she's been raised to kill actually everything outside of our house, boston terriers can't do much to a fox. I actually liked foxes a lot more before I shot one personally, it was so fucking disgusting, parasite-riddled and smelly that it sort of tore down the "ooooo so majestic" thing going on in my head. They're cool animals, though. I don't think shooting him is practical, but it'll work as a last resort.

>>2023216
I'm pretty into taxidermy myself. Road kill is always a good option to start out. The skins aren't always in tact, but if you're just starting out, they're not going to be at the end of things regardless. Small stuff like squirrels help too. Super easy and you're not fucking up anything valuable. If this guy has an alright pelt, I'll probably be sending him down to the tannery myself.


The trap was set off again tonight, looks like by a possum. And thank fucking jesus Christ, because apparently my cat got outside somehow. It's a Christmas fucking miracle he isn't dead from one thing or another.

>>2022762
Did you ask the fox? May I ask what did the fox say?

>>2023261
Ah, that's cool.

I've got a kit in my car for picking up roadkill but have only collected one reasonably salvageable animal so far. It was a squirrel and I tried tanning up the skin but in the process most if not all the hair slipped. I don't know what went wrong.

Prior to that I've attempted tanning a couple times previous but failed miserably. Only time I've been somewhat successful so far was with a skin from a baby rabbit that my dog unfortunately got ahold of before it could run away. Even then I only have a small scrap of fur from that because the rabbit skin was just so damn thin and delicate.

So I'm pretty noob at it. Been on the lookout for more animals to practice with but haven't gotten much luck on that front. I'm not really interested in killing any animals specifically for this purpose so I'm basically just relying on secondhand sources like roadkill and such.

Any other tips you could give me?

Also damn, close call with your cat, I'm glad he's ok. Good luck with the fox, too.

>>2023261
Where do you live? We bait them here with 1080. Poisonous to dogs though. Oh and shooting them of course. They're feral here, as shitty as feral cats t.b.h. kill everything that moves.

>>2022762
fucking mange ridden vernin. i hate foxes, have been trying to get anfamily out of my garage for some time now. humane merhods dont work, i have crafted a spear and will get every last one of them tomorrow. Cleaning up torn bins was a minor inconvinience but now that ive seen an almost entirely bald one, i cant risk them giving my puppy diseases.

>>2023270
I've been skinning stuff since I was about 7 or 8, but I don't have much actual experience actually tanning hides. I'd suggest you buy a tanning kit, it'd help a lot. Did you stretch and salt the hide correctly? It's the most important step. If the hair falls out, it's because something is rotting or the carcass was too old. There's a lot of useful YouTube tutorials from rednecks who have a lifetime of experience on both skinning and tanning that could help. Trapping and taxidermy forums help too.
I'd honestly advise you start out with fresh hides any way you can get them; it's a lot easier for beginners. Squirrels, rats, ect are pretty expendable. I think I've got my headcount up to maybe 50 or 60 squirrels this year and they're still fucking everywhere. It's absurd. The easiest way to catch squirrels without a gun is using a rat trap with some thin and pointy nails hammered into it right where it snaps down. (and you can obviously just use rat traps for rats.) You can easily bait these with peanut butter and keep them out of the reach of non-target animals by hammering them to trees. If you're not comfortable doing that, just keep searching for dead stuff.

>>2023272
I'm not comfortable using poison. I don't like the idea of something dying slowly and awfully like that, even if it is a nuisance animal who's killed some of my pets. Traps kill them in a few minutes max from suffocation if their spine isn't broken immediately, but that's way different than a few hours of internal organs shutting down from poison. Plus, I've had many friends' pets get poisoned by neighbors intending to kill feral cats. I'll shoot a cat any day, but not poison them.

>>2023614
>foxes
>in your garage

>>2023827
Skinned it, fleshed it, then salted it. When I went to re-hydrate the skin, most of the hair was falling out.

I'm not sure how old the carcass was by the time I got to it, but it was pretty intact aside from a squashed head.

I may have been too aggressive with fleshing? Aside from that, or the body having been dead too long before I got to it, I really don't know what else could've gone wrong. It was pretty frustrating but well, I guess that's life.

And yeah, not really comfortable killing animals just for practice. If I'm hunting for food I'll of course use all I can, but I'm not going to kill animals just to take their hides.

It's been ten days with nothing at all. The first day, there were dozens of pictures. Everything after has just been one or two raccoon pictures but ALL of the food being gone. I moved the trail cam, am I scaring things away somehow, or is my trail cam fucked?

>>2024391
It was probably either too old or you could've fleshed too hard, but I think it was just too old. Again, YouTube tutorials and taxidermy forums. Join one and get help there. I've also found there's a somewhat prominent vulture culture on tumblr who will be more useful for roadkill finding than those from a taxidermy forum. Everyone else will probably be working with fresh hides.

I don't think there's any difference between killing for food and just killing. It still gets used. You'll feed hundreds of insects and a few wild animals. It's dead regardless of whether you eat it, the only difference is one based in feelings instead of reality. Using all of something doesn't really change it at all, I'm not sure why people use that to justify anything.

>>2022762

Look for a porcupine trap, whenever you handle it, use some gloves to not leave too much of your smell on it, expecially when you place the bait inside the trap.

>>2023001
>3 feet off the ground

Do you really think a fox can't jump 3 feets anon?

Anyway, that fox got the habit of going around looking for hens, it's a bad thing.

Buy some fence big enough to let your hens run free and get it around your coop, make sure that it's tall enough to not let the fox jump it and it's buired at least 6 thumbs in the ground.

By the way sorry for the bad engrish.

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>>2022860
>>2022868
>>2022872
>>2022970
This lol. Op I still don't see why you can't make a pen. Looked after and kept chickens growing up, kept them in a fox proof pen and never lost one to a predator. Unless you shoot every single living fox the problem will keep comming back, the issue is you haven't protected them propperly.

>>2026642
Thanks for the advice man, I'll look into it.

And yeah, it doesn't change the fact that the animal is dead either way. But I feel that if it's going to have its life taken I might as well put it to as much use as I can or else I feel the killing was less justified/fair, and is wasteful. I don't want to be wasteful with their lives. I know the end result is the same but I'm just not comfortable with it.

>>2026664
Looks like an awesome set-up. Doesn't look too expensive to build, too.

>>2027049
Should be dirt cheap, this is just an example I found, but its pretty much the same as the set up we had on the little community farm I used to volunteer at. Not saying its good that the fox has got a taste for your chickens, but this is really what you need if you want to prevent it from happening again. Just make sure you dig the fence down nice and deep, and look for signs of digging when you check in on them in the morning.

>>2027049
You're welcome. Good luck with dead stuff.
>>2026660
>>2026664
>>2029691
I don't think it's at all wrong that I value the animals I'm obligated to take care of over a wild animal.
My chickens are pretty clearly happier free range. Whenever I've caged them in the past, all they wanted was out of it. It'd take a lot of bullshit to build a big enough run. I'm not saying it isn't doable, I could make a very large run, but even then I'd have problems keeping it clean and it'd take a damn long time and probably a substantial amount of money to fox-proof a large area. Any area I've fenced chickens in before have almost immediately deteriorated into grassless sandy dirt, even when I was keeping 3 birds in a run 3/4 the size of that one.
I don't care about the fox as much as I care about the chickens or money. They're not endangered and obviously there's enough that they keep popping up. I don't see the problem, really.
Also. Cats. How can I deter cats from traps? My neighbor has some shit intact outside cat I don't want to catch by accident. I wouldn't care normally, but the neighbor in question is a huge prick. He's gone onto people's property and shot their animals out of spite and almost everyone else on my road has had a bad experience with him. Not somebody I want to fuck with at all.
I'll bait, but not set, the trap with chicken for a while so see if the cat will try and take it from the trap. If not, I'll set it and good luck to the cat. If it does, I don't know what I'll do.

>>2029864
>It'd take a lot of bullshit to build a big enough run.
Not really... Shouldn't take that long. Just sounds like you're looking for a quick and temporary fix. Not that I care if you are looking to kill the fox, they aren't exactly endangered and it'll keep comming back now it knows where to find a free meal, just that you wouldn't have lost your chickens in the first place if they were appropriately housed.

>Any area I've fenced chickens in before have almost immediately deteriorated into grassless sandy dirt, even when I was keeping 3 birds in a run 3/4 the size of that one.

I doubt that. Pop back and check on the place now and then, and there's been about a dozen chickens, ducks and guinea fowls living in an enclosure about that size for the past ten years without issue. Possibly you just live in a dry area with poor soil, I don't know, but it sounds like you're just throwing up excuses

>don't want to clean chicken poop
Part of owning animals my friend. Tough titties.