Recently I’ve been talking with Matt Goodlife from England and found out that he is quite the hunter. I didn’t know a lot about hunting in England so I began to ask some questions and began to gain some insight into what it is like to pursue game there. I told Matt that he should do some writing to let everyone here in the states know what it is like there in England as well. So Matt has agreed to occasionally pass along a story about his adventures in England, so without further ado here is Matt’s first entry into the blogging world.
Seeing Red: By Matt Goodlife
The fox is a fantastically interesting animal fact. He is a beautiful animal with his red coat, black stockings and white
tipped tail. He see’s everything, pin point hearing and a nose 10x’s better than ours. He can live on fruit and berries from the hedgerow, small mammals such as mice, voles and rats, bigger fayre like rabbits, new born deer fawns and sometimes to the farmers loss his spring lambs. To sit on a summer evening as the sun sets and watch a group of fox cubs play and fight on a stack of hay bales is wonderful but then on the other hand to come down to your chicken coup in the morning to find most of your hens dead with no heads makes your blood boil and makes you swear you’ll kill every last one!
So over here the easiest way to control the ever growing population is to use a centre fire rifle, a good spotlight and a Landrover. You can walk but you don’t cover the same amount of ground on a night, you can also have a rifle mounted lamp and go on your own but I have a partner who runs the lamp while I drive and shoot. Now most people go out with a hunting buddy who they also go deer stalking or bird shooting with and so do I, Roberta my girlfriend. She likes the outdoors, understands how things work in the wild and now has chickens!
So the idea is to drive round your hunting area shining the lamp over the field’s looking to see eyes shining back at
you, it could be a deer, a badger, someone’s cat or a fox. Make sure you know what it is before a rifle is pointed at it! If it’s far away you can slowly drive on to it but if not start calling and bring it to you. Once the fox is in range and it’s a safe shot then take your shot.
That’s all well and good but some people rush the shot or are just not a good marksman, to miss a fox when out lamping creates a lamp shy fox that remembers the bright light and a loud bang, you will not be catching up with that fox at night again, as soon as he see a bright light he’ll turn tail and look for somewhere healthier to be!
So a few weeks ago Roberta and I were out lamping, we drove into a field on the farm turned the lamp on and slowly searched the field for eyes. 100 yards out a fox is looking back at us then he turns and bolts to cover, guess what’s happened to him before! Someone’s missed him and he’s not having any of it again! 2 more nights same time, same field and the same result. So what do you do!?
A trip to my local gun shop and I come home with a red filter to fit onto the lamp which is a lightforce striker 170. The foxes don’t seem to see the red light as much as a white light. That night out we go, we arrive in that field around the same time and turn the lamp on and at 70 yards out in the field eyes shine back but this time it stays where it is, I lip squeak, the fox sits down and that’s the last thing it does as my .243 stamps cancelled on him.
Foxes are a creature of habit so there’s a good chance it’s the same animal, as we’ve been out since then and not had any foxes running away, if not its one less. They are a lovely animal but must be kept in check.
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