Thread: Never to old to learn.

Some of you will remember me from my Sambar deer deer days. But I have moved on and now hide way up in the great white north (Northern Ontario). I know you are all suffering from a heatwave back in NZ , but here we are in lockdown in the middle of winter with temp's hitting the minus 20s,,,, so what better time to sit down and put together a story .

My hunting days have been put behind me ,,well killing and dragging home meat. The camera is now the tool of trade, not that I'm any good with it but I try .
This story starts with a road kill whitetail deer my landlord arrived home with after one of his road trips .I happened to go out to the shed and there he was trying to salvage some meat off the very mangled carcass , there wasn't much. I asked if I could have all the leftovers for fox food .He looked at me as if I was crazy(not unusual as he is french and dosn't understand my accent. So into shopping bags then into my freezer it went .

So late one afternoon I took a bag of roadkill from my freezer, grabbed the camera bag and headed north out of town about 20k's,turned into a mining road(this place was once the uranium capitol of the world). This road was rather slippery as light snow was falling so I pulled over and parked up, I climbed the snow bank on the side of the road load with my gear and fox food and headed of into the bush to a clearing I knew of where a family of fox lived. The snow was waist deep and the going was slow and I only just made it to the clearing .Stomping around in the snow I made a hollow with a seat so when I sat down I could just see over the top .

Right now lets get into it coz it's freeakin cold and I don't want to be here to long as it was snowing heavier now and there was only about an hour of daylight left, I hurled the roadkill as far as I could then pulled out my phone and pulled up my predator call app, choosing the wounded rabbit squeal which I play about half a dozen times, then sat and waited,,,,,, nothing,,, played it again ,,,,,,,, nothing ,then out of the corner of my eye I see movement. Trying to focus my eyes through the falling snow I finally see it, standing still but staring at me ,moving slowly I turn the camera on and try to check the settings, but Murphy must have been behind me coz that fox was gone quicker than a robbers dog,,,,,lots of swearing,, packed up and go the hell out of there.

Made it back to my Jeep, tossed my gear in and brushed off as much snow as I could and jumped in ,,, man I cranked that jeep into life as fast as I could, I was so cold!!!!!!! possibly a little hypothermic ,..after warming up a little I backed out onto the road and was about to turn for home hen I noticed lights up the road. It would be rude to leave and not check that they were ok. Cruised down and as I pull up and wind down my window there is a big frenchman leaning out his window yelling TABERNACK,,,,,,TABERNACK big arsed cat,,,,, repeating it over and over ,I calmed him down and asked where ,,,he said out on the ice,,,,it wanted to cross the gap in the ice but was afraid to come closer to him,,,ran up and down as if panicking.I asked how big, he said very big.I asked long tail or short tail( we have a good population of Linx a few Bobcat and very rare is the Cougar).He said lomggggggggggggg ,,, oh crap thats a Cougar.

I made sure he was ok and turned and headed for home, ,,,driving gets you thinking,,, what was that Cougar up to??And then it dawned on me that darn predator call must have got his juices running and it didn't want to miss out on a meal.....OHHHH and I was going to be its meal. I would have been such an easy meal. Approaching from behind OMG my hair stands on end every time I think about it.I could have been calling in a pack of wolves.
Anyway going to try post some photos,,,,please work.

Beautiful!

Nice, thanks for taking the time to write that up.

Very good. Thanks for posting @Back Bear.

Good stuff, foxes are fascinating critters and remarkably sneaky - I managed to get a single photo of one when I visited Canada, before it silently turned around and pretty much evaporated into thin air.

Wild Fox by Ben, on Flickr

I took a heap of squirrel photos too, which the locals found quite amusing. Not such a novelty for them!

Good story and nice pictures and greetings from Southern Ontario.

Cool story and pictures, it does look pretty cold over there right now.