Fox Control for Game Shoots: Protecting Release Pens and Nesting Birds

For a shoot, fox losses aren't spread evenly through the year. They come in two sharp windows, and missing either one can cost a season's birds. Whether you run a farm shoot, a syndicate, or a keepered estate, the principle is the same: get on top of the foxes before the birds are at their most exposed, not after.

Spring: nesting game birds

Wild grey and red-legged partridge and pheasants nest on the ground in spring, in hedge bottoms, field margins, and rough grass. A sitting hen and her clutch have little defence against a fox working along a hedgerow at dusk, and at the same time vixens are feeding cubs, so foxes are hunting harder than at any other point in the year. On shoots that rely on wild birds, spring is the season that matters most.

Summer: poults in the release pen

When poults go into release pens in summer, a lot of birds are concentrated in one place, and many aren't yet roosting off the ground at night. A fox that gets into a pen, or catches birds that have strayed outside it, can kill a large number in a single night. Pen fencing and electric wires do much of the work, but a fox that's already found the pen will keep testing it.

How control fits around a shoot

Control is planned with the keeper or shoot captain, so it works with the shoot's routine rather than against it. In practice that means working the ground around pens and the routes foxes use to reach them, using thermal and night vision to find foxes before they get there, and calling or stalking where a safe shot is possible. Bait stations can help draw a fox that's working a wide area to a place where it can be dealt with safely.

Doing it within the rules

There's no close season for foxes, but the methods are regulated, as covered in when can you legally control foxes in the UK?. All control here is by rifle, carried out by a certificate-holding professional, with the landowner's permission and a safe backstop for every shot.

If you run a shoot anywhere across Yorkshire and the North and foxes are costing you birds, our fox control for game shoots is free, and it can be planned well ahead of next season's release.