Fox Control for Game Shoots
Free fox control for keepered estates, syndicates, and farm shoots across Yorkshire and the North. Protecting release pens in summer and nesting game birds in spring, planned with your keeper and carried out by rifle using thermal and night vision.
Not sure it's a fox? Text a photo to Chris on 07397 942663 and he'll get back to you the same day.
The shooting year
When shoots lose birds to foxes
Spring: nesting game birds
Wild grey and red-legged partridge and pheasants nest on the ground in hedge bottoms, field margins, and rough grass. 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, or are working to build them up, spring is the season that matters most.
Summer: poults in the release pen
When poults go into release pens, 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. Getting on top of the foxes around the pen before release is far easier than reacting afterwards.
Through the season
Once birds are out of the pen and spreading across the shoot, foxes keep working the woods, hedgerows, and feed rides where they gather. Control continues where it's needed, fitted around shoot days so it never gets in the way of the shooting itself.
Our fox calendar shows what foxes are doing month by month, from cubbing to the release pen.
How it works
Fitted around your shoot
Planned with your keeper
Every shoot runs differently. Control is planned with the keeper or shoot captain, around the release dates, feeding rounds, and shoot days, so it supports the work already going on rather than cutting across it.
Thermal, night vision, and the rifle
Foxes are controlled by rifle, by a certificate-holding professional, using thermal and night vision to find foxes before they reach the birds and to identify each one clearly. Every shot is taken with a safe backstop, with livestock, footpaths, and neighbouring ground accounted for.
Stalking, calling, and bait stations
Around pens and along the routes foxes use to reach them, that means stalking foxes on their usual lines, calling them in, or using a bait station to draw a fox that's working a wide area to a place where it can be dealt with safely.
Free of charge
There's no callout fee and nothing to pay at the end, whether it's a keepered estate, a syndicate, or a small farm shoot. The aim is to protect the birds, not to clear every fox from the area.
Common questions
Questions shoots often ask
Ideally in the weeks before poults go into the pen, so the foxes already working that ground are dealt with before there's anything to draw them in. If you're already losing birds, get in touch straight away and control can start around the pen as soon as possible.
Yes. Control is planned with your keeper or shoot captain and fitted around their routine, release dates, and shoot days. If you run the shoot yourselves, it's planned with whoever looks after the birds.
Yes. Syndicates, DIY shoots, and small farm shoots get the same service as larger keepered estates, and it's free for all of them.
It's planned not to. Most control happens at night with thermal and night vision, away from where birds are roosting, and it's kept clear of shoot days altogether.
Yes. There's no charge to the shoot or the landowner, and no callout fee. Fox control sits alongside our deer management, which is also free.
Coverage
Shoots we cover
We cover shoots across Yorkshire and the North, from partridge and pheasant shoots on the Wolds to estates in the Vale of York, the Dales fringe, and Bowland. See fox control in North Yorkshire, East Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, North Lincolnshire, North Nottinghamshire, East Lancashire, South Durham and Teesside.
Deer damaging cover crops or woodland on the shoot? Our deer management is free too.
Foxes costing you birds?
Call or text Chris with where the shoot is and when you're releasing. It's worth a conversation well ahead of next season.
Not sure it's a fox? Text a photo to Chris on 07397 942663 and he'll get back to you the same day.