In defence of foxes
A beguiling mix of dog and cat (those narrow pupils, that ability to stalk small mammals), they are gustily vocal, communicating in the squeaks, howls and purrs that can drive human neighbours mad during mating season. Picture: Unsplash.
Last June, huntsman Oliver Thompson of The Old Berkshire Foxhounds was filmed goading one of his terriers with a young fox cub. Caught by the scruff of her neck in Thompson’s fist, the little fox’s expression is a mix of fear and hissing defiance, as if she has absorbed the centuries of hatred directed towards her species and knows, in her bones, that nothing is going to go well [1]. Thompson was prosecuted by the RSPCA and forced to leave his role at the Hunt [2] but, for many hunters, Thompson’s biggest problem was not the act of cruelty itself; after all, hunts regularly train dogs to kill by setting them on very young animals. It was that he had been found out.
On horseback, the practice is known as ‘cubbing’, and takes place between August and October, when cubs are about six months old. Mounted horsemen surround a stretch of woodland and make threatening noises to stop any fox cubs escaping, explains hunt saboteur Lynn Sawyer in Hunting: A Guide for Anti-Hunt and Animal Rights Activists. Braver foxes sometimes make it out. Those too frightened or too little to leave will be killed by hounds or dug out. [3]. A poll by Protect the Wild last year showed that almost 95% of respondents had no idea what cubbing was. [4]. For hunts, it’s an open secret.
To raise awareness, the wildlife advocacy group created a spoof match commentary in which 26 mounted riders and their dogs range themselves against four small cubs. “The cubs have got a horrendous record for this fixture,” ” chirrups the presenter. “I think this young side will find it very very hard to compete, The reel ends with the braying of the hounds and the screams of the cubs. Their cries still haunt me. “Somewhere in the UK is a bunch of lickspittle miscreants out with a bunch of dogs, cub hunting,” spat conservationist Chris Packham recently. “This year’s fox cubs, those beautiful little animals who play an intrinsically important role in the ecology of our rural landscape and who are diminishing in number - yes rural fox populations are going down - they’re out there seeing if they can tear them to pieces with dogs. For fun.”
Love and Loathing
Few animals attract as many emotions as the fox. Many people adore them. Browse any countryside gift shop and you’ll see a wall of cards and tea towels showing foxes in all their aspects. Alongside badgers, deer and hares, they are, after all, one of the UK’s iconic animals and play key roles in our ecology: from regulating rodent populations and pollinating plants to cleaning up carrion and preventing the spread of disease. Wildlife photographer Richard Bowler started photographing foxes over 20 years ago: “I've been lucky enough to travel extensively and have seen most of the iconic wild animals but nothing is more beautiful than a Red fox in its winter coat.” For others, however, the hatred is unfathomable. In Foxes Unearthed: A Story of Love and Loathing in Modern Britain, author Lucy Jones addresses this tension, from historical characterisations of the fox as devious predator to the hotly debated right to kill them today. “Breathe the word "fox" among certain people and it could quickly change the atmosphere in the room,” she muses. [5]
I am sitting in the Kent garden of Trevor Williams, founder and CEO of The Fox Project, which rescues injured or young foxes, nurses them to health and independence, and releases them back into the wild. In a cage nearby, two orphaned cubs scrabble furiously at the bars, desperate for contact. With their perfect faces and little round bellies, they are adorable. I want to scoop them up but, for successful release, human contact is kept to the minimum. “They’re so lovely,” I say. “They are,” replies Williams, softly, decades of advocacy in his tones. The cubs are only a little younger than the fox in Thompson’s video.
Foxes are unusual creatures. A beguiling mix of dog and cat (those narrow pupils, that ability to stalk small mammals), they are gustily vocal, communicating in the squeaks, howls and purrs that can drive human neighbours mad during mating season. They are elfin, otherworldly and highly intelligent. In Being a Beast: An Intimate and Radical Look at Nature, Charles Foster attempted to live like a fox, spending hours curled up in a back garden in East London and rooting in bins. He is awed: “When they walk along fence tops like teenage Olympic Romanians on the beam, or blast from a hedge on to a wood pigeon, or seep like mercury up to a rabbit, they’re doing it with a back so bad that, were they office workers, it would have them signed permanently off work.” And he is compassionate: “Foxes seem to enjoy being outrageous. They flaunt their thriving in conditions that are objectively wretched.” [6]
And wretched they are. The average lifespan of a fox in the wild is 18 months; most die before their fourth birthday. Any fox older than that is living against the odds. In captivity, they can live up to 15 years. [7] Cause of death is almost always human. Urban foxes are routinely plagued with disease and malnutrition (bins are rarely nutritionally complete). They are shot as pests - one of the UK’s most prolific fox killers, Bruce Lindsay-Smith, claims to have killed over 100,000 foxes [8] - or mown down by cars, the biggest killer of all. In rural areas, where 86 percent of foxes live, gamekeepers shoot up to 80,000. Meanwhile, hunts continue to dodge the Hunting Act of 2004 with the imaginative use of loopholes. Most controversial is trail hunting, where hunters lay a trail of animal urine for a hunt to follow but can then claim “an accident occurred where the dogs chased a wild mammal out of their control” as a legal defence for a slaughtered fox. [9] According to Protect the Wild’s report “A Case for a Proper Ban on Hunting”, hunt saboteurs and monitors attended 2,267 meets during the 2023/24 sason; a staggering figure for a supposedly banned activity. [10]
Hunt saboteurs and fox hunters, United Kingdom, 2011. Photographer: Jo-Anne McArthur / Lauren Veerslaat / We Animals
The hunter’s justification for the killing is population control. The current British fox population is estimated to be 240,000 adults in spring, to which 425,000 cubs are born. For the population to remain ‘stable’, writes the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, those cubs must be killed. [11] Foxes do, without a doubt, rifle through bins, dig up gardens, make weird noises during mating and terrorise and occasionally kill domestic animals and livestock - but something else is going on. Calls for non-lethal control such as anti-predator fences or arguments that fox populations may actually self-regulate (“although the population increases dramatically at breeding time, the numbers soon fall back to pre-breeding levels.” [12] Jones points out) - or are actually falling, says Packham - go unheeded by the hunt supporters, who claim that hunting is “actually the most humane form of control and a much more natural way for a fox to die than poisoning or shooting.” [13]
Isn’t it cruel, chasing an animal to its death? Apparently not. “95 per cent of the time I’d say when a fox is hunted, it’s not been stressed,” Andrew Cook, Master of Foxhounds, tells Jones. “I don’t think a fox thinks until the last few seconds that it’s in too much danger.” [14]
The thrill of the chase
The elective blindness shared by Cook and his cohorts would not be possible if hunters didn’t find hunting foxes with dogs so, well, fun. Both the late philosopher Roger Scruton and anthropologist Garry Marvin waxed lyrical about fox hunting. “As the hounds close in on the fox with the riders behind them, an emotional connection with the countryside has been fully realised,” gushed Marvin, “This is marked by total involvement, a total immersion, in the event by all the participants. So intense is this moment … that there is no space for reflection or doubt - instincts and passion flow together. It is a moment beyond meaning.” [15]
In a similar vein, Scruton observed: “The blood of another species flows through your veins, stirring the old deposits of collective life, releasing pockets of energy that a million generations laboriously harvested from the crop of human suffering …” [16]
Sounds splendid. Indeed, most of us would want to partake were it not for the intended outcome. But, in Scruton’s and Marvin’s mullings, the sentient animal at the heart of this florid lyricism is all but forgotten, of no more import than the ball in a football match (a ‘sport’ Scruton compares hunting to). The arrogance will shake future generations, versed as they will be in animal sentience. In response, it’s worth reflecting how the fox might have described the same event: her desperate attempts to draw the hounds from her cubs, the rising panic as the braying draws closer, the pain as her underbelly is ripped open. A moment beyond meaning, as Marvin might say. The fox would agree.
Muscular and informative, Sawyer’s Guide draws from historical references to remind readers of the casual savagery that underpins hunting. Here is one quote from Lord Willoughby de Broke, 1921: “One really well beaten cub is worth more than any amount of fresh ones chopped before the Hounds have had to work for them.” [17]
Then there is the practice of bagging foxes, where trapped, deliberately brutalised foxes are released just before the hunt. [18] “The fox made no attempt to gain cover; it seemed bewildered and raced round in circles, so that it was caught by the hounds within a few minutes,” reported Robert Churchward, then Joint Master of the South Shropshire hunt. “Immediately I rode over to an experienced groom and asked him about it. He told me, quite bluntly, that the fox had been bagged and that its pads had been slit with a penknife just before it had been released into the covert.
“Dedicated fox hunter though I was, I found this hard to believe, but it was true enough,” he continued. “Other methods include cutting off a couple of inches of a bagged fox’s brush before the hunt begins or sprinkling broken glass outside an earth so that a fox cuts his pads on his way out.” [19] Churchward eventually left hunting to become a spokesperson for the League Against Cruel Sports.
These are old quotes but it’s worth noting that every hunt today bears the legacy of this barbarism, barely concealed by red coats and pageantry. It bursts forth when hunting is interrupted by saboteurs, with instances of coercion, aggression and physical assault on saboteurs common. And it bubbles up in other places, too. When students at the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, decided to make an entrance at a fundraising event, they strapped a dead fox to the roof of their vehicle [20]. The moment was posted on social media, with the caption: “Does it get anymore ciren”. The college’s motto: ‘Arvorum Cultus Pecorumque‘; a quote from Virgil’s Georgics, which means ‘Caring for the Fields and the Beasts’.
A history of traumatised children
Protect the Wild offered a different take: “The RAU, renowned for rowdy behaviour and a heavy drinking culture, is a hothouse for ‘young farmers’ who will carry their appalling lack of empathy and self-awareness into the wider countryside.“ [21] One shudders to think of the other animals in their ‘care.’ “The only way Fox Hunting would count as vermin control is if the posh twats fell off their horses and broke their necks. #KeepTheBan“ comedian Ricky Gervais once famously wrote on social media. Last year, Gervais teamed up with PETA and actor Mark Rylance to call for a ban on children attending hunts, arguing that “watching wildlife being terrorised, shot down, or otherwise slaughtered is inarguably traumatic for children to witness. It can be psychologically scarring for young people, most of whom have a natural empathy for animals.” [22]
That the students at the RAU are traumatised children is probably closer to the truth than anyone would care to admit. In the 1980s, the League published Churchward’s work, A Master of Hounds Speaks, in which he recalls his first hunt, at the age of six. “I saw a bedraggled vixen baring [her] teeth,” he wrote. ”The hounds fell upon her and everyone cheered, and I joined in, so that my father’s friends would think well of me. The next few moments were important in my life. The hounds snapped at the vixen’s body; the flesh was torn away, and instinctively I felt sick. It was then, as I now realise, that I needed guidance. A few words from an adult expressing compassion for the tortured animal would have turned me against hunting forever. Instead, my father’s groom rode over to me. “You’re a lucky young man,” he said. “First time out, and a kill!” [23]
It is the counter-narrative - the truth about foxes and everything they are - that makes this all so heartbreaking. Foster tells the story of Charles Macdonald, who kept pet foxes. “One of his vixens was caught in the flailing blades of a grass cutter. A leg dangled by a thread of tissues. Macdonald’s distraught wife picked her up [and took her to the vet]. The next day, the vixen’s sister picked up a mouthful of food at a chase, and ran off with it, whimpering as foxes do when they’re giving food to cubs. She hadn’t called like that for over a year. She took the food to the grass hollow where, the night before, her sister had bled. She buried it beneath the blood-stained blades of grass,” writes Foster. “It was this that made me more anthropomorphic about foxes than about any of my other animals.” [24]
In their abilities to observe and to remember; their joy and their loyalty to each other, Foster compares foxes to dogs. “These faculties in the fox translate just as inevitably into relationality as the corresponding faculties do in dogs. It’s just that the relation is with other foxes.” As it should be: with their mercurial natures, foxes would make challenging ‘pets’. But when a rescue cannot be released into the wild, for example, stories of interspecies bonds abound. When retired engineer Mike Trowler first met Cropper the Fox, thanks to the Fox Project, for example. he was in no shape to be returned to the wild. For years, till Cropper passed away in 2007, the man and the fox shared a unique relationship, two elderly gentlemen going for long walks together.
Bowler cares for two rescue foxes, Charlie and Hetty; a third, Rosie, passed away last year, aged 11. “All three have had different personalities,” says Bowler. “Charlie is the most needy and has to have a fussing every day. Hetty is very vocal and loves a free range egg from our rescue chickens; she also likes to groom my head and beard with the side of her mouth. Rosie was the most independent. “She was always pleased to see us but only occasionally wanted a fuss. When she did, however, she rolled onto her back so she could have a good belly rub,” remembers Bowler. All three foxes had a loving relationship with his terrier, Maddy. “She mothered them when they were cubs and they never forgot it.
“Maddy is 15 now and finds it hard to keep up with them but when she was younger, she was always running around chasing them and the foxes taunted her, nicking her toys or favourite dog sausage treat.” Maddy was bred by terrier men. “Terriers and hounds are trained to kill foxes. It doesn't come naturally to them,” says Bowler. “I trust Maddy 100 percent with the foxes and have done so even when they were cubs.”
A man's best friend. When Cropper was nursed back to health by Mike's love and determination, Cropper became a member of Mike's family.
The battle to rehabilitate the fox’s reputation and to end hunting continues. Charities such as Protect the Wild, The Humane League and League Against Cruel Sports advocate vociferously on their behalf, telling the stories of their hurt, peppering communications with pictures that show the animals in their full glory. The 64 local groups that make up the Hunt Saboteurs Association resolutely patrol frontlines at dawn, steering hunts away from their prey, capturing evidence of transgressions and enduring abuse - both verbal and physical. Since early 2022, Packham regularly shares images of foxes across social media, with the hashtag #foxoftheday. Contributions show foxes curled up in the snow, sunning themselves, frolicking, fighting. Mouthy high profile supporters like Gervais and Packham really help.
Williams says neighbours are now more sympathetic to the work of the Project. “It's interesting to see how things have turned around. When we started in 2010, the majority of calls we got were complaints about foxes and fear about foxes. Now, about 90 percent of the calls we get are positive.” In 1992, The Fox Project took in three foxes. In 2023, the hospital, ambulance and care home combined took in 1,400. Its instagram account attracts floods of love and concern with heart-warming ‘before’ and ‘after’ stories of rescued foxes. There have been other notable successes: in 2021, the National Trust banned trail hunting on its land; earlier this month, the Ministry of Defence agreed to do the same for the 2024/2025 season [25]. Culture is catching up.
The end of an era?
“The way to stop illegal fox hunting is to make it socially unacceptable,” says Bowler. “We need to get away from the public seeing a hunt as a countryside tradition for the perversion it is.“ He uses the term deliberately. “When you have lived with foxes and you know how sentient, gentle, sensitive, intelligent they are, you really do have to be perverted to rip them to pieces with a pack of hounds. I share images of foxes that the public haven't seen before, like those of Charlie and Hetty playing with Maddy. The public would be up in arms if a terrier like Maddy was chased down and ripped to pieces. I like to show foxes are no different.”
Polling data commissioned earlier this year by the League against Cruel Sports showed that 76 percent of voters want hunting laws strengthened by the new government [26] - but the forces that maintain countryside pursuits are rich, and they are entrenched. For these communities, change will be slow - particularly as hunting continues to be shored up by education institutions such as the RAU.
“Socialisation and guilt have much to do with the continuation of how messed up our relationship is towards the ecosystem in which we live,” reflects Sawyer. “To face up to the many different atrocities we commit on one another and upon other species is to be accountable for one’s own complicity and participation. It is to recognise that oneself and loved ones have normalised grotesque crimes against nature and individuals who just want to live. Integrity and courage demands facing it and striving to stop being part of the problem as opposed to pretending that the victims do not feel pain, do not matter and to project blame onto them.” [27]
In the meantime, foxes continue to work their magic on those who love them. In one clip by photographer Severine Sitbon, two fox cubs play close to their affectionate mother, whose patience will be familiar to any parent. In another clip, by filmmaker Stefan Decker, six small cubs play on hay bales at sunset, pouncing on each other, nosing each other, sweet as sugar, as if no war is being waged against their kin. And in the end, perhaps it is this: the fox’s defiance in the face of centuries of persecution. Humans require animals to be placid, controllable, mindful of boundaries and property, of bedtimes and human schedules; they require them to be subservient, of service, of use. Foxes refuse.
Charlie and Hetty live in a large natural enclosure on the edge of Bowler’s wood. The foxes have dug their own earth “so any interaction is on their terms,” he says. “I get moved the most when I'm just sitting quietly watching the wildlife on our smallholding and one of the foxes comes and sits next to me. For one of them to see me sitting there and just come up, it’s just magical.
CITATIONS
[1] December 19, 2023. Video of fox being thrown to hunting hounds helps convict Oxfordshire man, Banbury Guardian. https://www.banburyguardian.co.uk/news/crime/video-of-fox-being-thrown-to-hunting-hounds-helps-convict-oxfordshire-man-4451732
[2] Egret, E. Oliver Thompson: hunter avoids prison after torturing foxes. Protect the Wild. December 15, 2023. https://protectthewild.org.uk/news/oliver-thompson-hunter-avoids-prison-after-torturing-foxes/
[3] Lynn Sawyer, Hunting: A Guide for Anti-Hunt and Animal Rights Activists. Independently published, 2022, p. 94
[4] Protect the Wild, July 28, 2023. Spoof sports show used to expose sick pastime of 'cub hunting'. https://protectthewild.substack.com/p/spoof-sports-show-used-to-expose?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
[5] Jones, L. May 16, 2016. Why We Should Learn to Love Foxes. GQ Magazine.
[6] Charles Foster, Being a Beast: Adventures Across the Species Divide. Metropolitan Books, 2016.
[7] Lucy Jones, Foxes Unearthed: A Tale of Love and Loathing in Modern Britain. Elliott and Thompson Limited, 2017. p. 107
[8] Liveris, J. FOR FOX SAKE I’m a fox sniper & have killed over 100k urban pests – people think I’m cruel but I’m actually an animal lover. The Sun, October 20, 2023.
[9] How do Hunts Get AWay with Illegal Fox Hunting, Protect the Wild. https://protectthewild.org.uk/wildlife/mammals/fox-facts/fox-hunting-faq/how-do-hunts-get-away-with-illegal-fox-hunting/\
[10] Black, G. “A Case for a Proper Ban on Hunting”,, September 10, 2024. https://protectthewild.org.uk/news/new-report-case-for-a-proper-ban-on-hunting/
[11] Fox. Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust. https://www.gwct.org.uk/wildlife/research/mammals/fox/
[12] Jones, L. p107.
[13] Ibid, p149
[14] Ibid, p149
[15] Ibid, quoted, p149
[16] Ibid, p164
[17] Sawyer, p98
[18] Ibid, p120
[19] Ibid, p120
[20] Tingle, R. Outrage after students at Britain's top agricultural university strap dead fox to the roof of a car. Daily Mail, February 7, 2023.
[21] Moores, C. Royal Agricultural University: Sick stunt as fox corpse tied to car roof. February 7, 2023. Protect the Wild.
[22] Munro, C. Ricky Gervais, Mark Rylance, Twiggy, and Others Call For Ban That Would Stop Children From Attending Hunts. October 28, 2023. PETA.
[23] Robert Churchward, A Master of Hounds Speaks, League Against Cruel Sports, p. 5. https://www.acigawis.org.uk/bloodsports/foxhunting/a-master-of-hounds-speaks
[24] Foster, p. 119.
[25] Egret, E. GREAT NEWS! MOD not licencing hunts on its land for 2024/25 season. September 12, 2024. Protect the Wild.
[26] New figures say strengthening fox hunting law is a vote winner in key battleground areas. May 30, 2024. League Against Cruel Sports. https://www.league.org.uk/news-and-resources/news/new-figures-say-strengthening-fox-hunting-law-is-a-vote-winner-in-key-battleground-areas/
[27] Sawyer, L. p. 3.
