I am back home having spent the Easter long weekend at my brother in laws farm. As a shooter, l was pretty keen to make the most of whatever opportunities came my way. On Friday just before dusk the brother in law and I decided to see if we could call in a fox. He’s never seen a fox get called in and I was keen to give it a crack. My .243 Tikka T3x Lite is the ducks nuts at his place because it gets pretty blowie there (even for WA). So at our first sit I got going with the shaker. After a few minutes I spotted a fox ambling towards us. It sat off about 150 yards so I switched over to my new Best Fox Call Original Caller. It came trotting in again and sat out at around 70 yards. With a squeeze on the trigger, down she went.
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We had another couple of sits but didn’t see another fox. So we headed back to the house for dinner. We went out after dinner to do some spotlighting, but we didn’t see any more foxes. We got a couple of Roos for dog feed. So it wasn’t a bad start to the long weekend.
I managed to persuade the brother in law to go out the next night. He wanted to target a few rabbits on the property. He tells me that in the past rabbits were apparently a huge problem and he was keen to get on top of the small patches that are there now. I decided to take the 204 and use the red filter on my spotlight. We started on a big paddock and saw a fox dart across in the distance. I got the Best Original Fox Caller going. In he came trotting along the fence line. A caress of the trigger and it was lights out for a well conditioned dog fox. We kept going and picked up about 6 rabbits and a few more Roos. The red light worked well. The bunnies were more settled under the red light. Normally they are pretty restless when the white light hits them. I managed to shoot 3 in quick succession, which was satisfying.
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On night 3 I went out on my own. Two nights in a row was plenty for the brother in law. I wanted to have a final crack at the foxes. I went out into the big paddock I shot the dog fox the previous night. I got the shaker caller going. I would turn the light on, sweep the paddock. See nothing and then call again. After doing this for about 10 minutes I switched the light on again. There sitting about 50 yards from the car was a quizzical fox wondering about the noise. Clearly it didn’t have to spend too long guessing. Down went fox number 3 for the weekend.
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I drove around for another hour or so. I saw another couple of foxes, but couldn’t get a ping at them. I did get another bunny, so that was ok. In summary it was an enjoyable weekend of shooting. I learned more about foxing. I also learned I need to modify my shooting setup from the vehicle as I missed an opportunity at a fox by a poor setup choice. It’s all about enjoying the experience and thinning out the fox numbers. I am now up to 25 for this calendar year.