snoopdog 1,256 Posted December 28, 2006 Report Share Posted December 28, 2006 i went to a funeral yesterday and on the way back home we gave my uncle a lift ..now this man is in his late sixties and has been about the gamekeeping game since he came out of the merchant navy god nows how many years ago he is a bit of aloaner so to speak and mostly keeps himself to himself but he still has his views on certain things ..for ten years starting in the early eighties he was gamekeeper stroke handyman /warden ..at malham tarn he took this job because he was his own boss and did the things his way he had to keep the rabbit population down near the tarn house rats and other vermin the tarn house is situated in the yorkshire dales it was used by students from sevral univesrsaties to study wildlife ..anyway thats another story i will tell another day..and i will get to the point..we were in the car and we started chatting about the fox.now this is his view and i was just listening but very inerested he said that we have had and these were his words ..a population exsplosion in foxes ...i said how do you mean ..he said twenty years ago the keepers would meet in the boozers and discuss how many foxes they have had so on and so on.proberly as they do now ..but the big difference is the number..he said the average between the men he talked to up and down the country was 10 and fifteen per season dont get me wrong he said some people got twenty plus depending on the size of the shoot..i.e. estate..he said now they are getting at least treble that ..then he said.. and the fooking size of the ba**tards now...he said a good fox and i mean a good fox would weigh 20 mabye 22 pounds ...now they are getting 28 to thirty pounders regulary..he said to me do you no why there are 10 times more foxes than there where twenty years ago .....i just looked at him and shook my head ..because he was on one now.....he said in 2004..there were 35 million game birds put down on regeritsed..game shoots so what about the unregeisted shoots .i.e small shoots thats another 5 million at least ...he said its like fu*king macdonalds out there they dont even have to hunt they just pick the fookers up....we were both laughing ..then he got all serious again ..he said why do you think there allover the towns and cities ....i said for the easy pickins ...he looked and me and shook his head and said young uns today now iam in my mid thirties but iam still glad he called me a young un.. he said the reason there in the towns and cities is because they are very terttorial animals ..which i knew anyway but kept my mouth shut ..he said theres no room in the country side any more even tho theres plenty of food..he said if they have moved to town for easy pickins why is the urban fox a skinny little runt ..and the country fox is getting to be as big as a f**king wolf ....i said what you trying to say .??he said the reason there are so many foxes about is because of these so called high sociaty people putting to many game birds down and the f*****g ban on hunting with dogs ...then he sarted going on about blair ..thats another story to ..he had alot of views on alot of things which i will tell another day ...one was about big cats that was a mind blower.. ...whats your views ??? and do you think he talked sense..?? Quote Link to post
bullsmilk 2 Posted December 28, 2006 Report Share Posted December 28, 2006 souds like ar eal character mate ...alota truth in what he says though Quote Link to post
jpnixon 7 Posted December 28, 2006 Report Share Posted December 28, 2006 it sounds good to me.... anyway. I think the point about the urban fox being skinny and the country fox does sound like sense i mean if pickings are so easy then why are urban foxes not as big as counryside foxes Quote Link to post
jacob 28 Posted December 28, 2006 Report Share Posted December 28, 2006 souds like ar eal character mate ...alota truth in what he says though uncle?merchant navy?his names not albert is it :laugh:proper character,what hes saying does make sense though ,i like the mcdonalds bit. Quote Link to post
witton 6 Posted December 28, 2006 Report Share Posted December 28, 2006 Tell us the big cat story please snoop, i am very interested in hearing it and im sure others will be to PLEASE PLEASE Quote Link to post
snoopdog 1,256 Posted December 28, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 28, 2006 to me hes a very interesting man he has a lot of views on wildlife i.e. the black rat which was pushed out of most of the british isles by the brown rat.. red squirrel ..grey squirrel..crayfish .i.e.the signal cray...hes photgaphed otters in the hebredies and i mean photos that would make you gasp ...he tamed and reared a mink from being a week or two old ..hes gor photos of that running round his neck ..i asked him what he did with it later on he said i knocked it on the head it wouldnt survive in the wild now ..i said what was the point of that ....he said to learn about the animal...a very interesting man to talk to i could listen to sombody like tht for hours..... Quote Link to post
fish 148 Posted December 28, 2006 Report Share Posted December 28, 2006 i went to a funeral yesterday and on the way back home we gave my uncle a lift ..now this man is in his late sixties and has been about the gamekeeping game since he came out of the merchant navy god nows how many years ago he is a bit of aloaner so to speak and mostly keeps himself to himself but he still has his views on certain things ..for ten years starting in the early eighties he was gamekeeper stroke handyman /warden ..at malham tarn he took this job because he was his own boss and did the things his way he had to keep the rabbit population down near the tarn house rats and other vermin the tarn house is situated in the yorkshire dales it was used by students from sevral univesrsaties to study wildlife ..anyway thats another story i will tell another day..and i will get to the point..we were in the car and we started chatting about the fox.now this is his view and i was just listening but very inerested he said that we have had and these were his words ..a population exsplosion in foxes ...i said how do you mean ..he said twenty years ago the keepers would meet in the boozers and discuss how many foxes they have had so on and so on.proberly as they do now ..but the big difference is the number..he said the average between the men he talked to up and down the country was 10 and fifteen per season dont get me wrong he said some people got twenty plus depending on the size of the shoot..i.e. estate..he said now they are getting at least treble that ..then he said.. and the fooking size of the ba**tards now...he said a good fox and i mean a good fox would weigh 20 mabye 22 pounds ...now they are getting 28 to thirty pounders regulary..he said to me do you no why there are 10 times more foxes than there where twenty years ago .....i just looked at him and shook my head ..because he was on one now.....he said in 2004..there were 35 million game birds put down on regeritsed..game shoots so what about the unregeisted shoots .i.e small shoots thats another 5 million at least ...he said its like fu*king macdonalds out there they dont even have to hunt they just pick the fookers up....we were both laughing ..then he got all serious again ..he said why do you think there allover the towns and cities ....i said for the easy pickins ...he looked and me and shook his head and said young uns today now iam in my mid thirties but iam still glad he called me a young un.. he said the reason there in the towns and cities is because they are very terttorial animals ..which i knew anyway but kept my mouth shut ..he said theres no room in the country side any more even tho theres plenty of food..he said if they have moved to town for easy pickins why is the urban fox a skinny little runt ..and the country fox is getting to be as big as a f**king wolf ....i said what you trying to say .??he said the reason there are so many foxes about is because of these so called high sociaty people putting to many game birds down and the f*****g ban on hunting with dogs ...then he sarted going on about blair ..thats another story to ..he had alot of views on alot of things which i will tell another day ...one was about big cats that was a mind blower.. ...whats your views ??? and do you think he talked sense..?? my kind of man Quote Link to post
justpiddlin76 0 Posted December 28, 2006 Report Share Posted December 28, 2006 Ya'lls foxes must be a hell of a lot bigger than ours cause I ain't never seen one go 20#'s. Most of ours are in the 15# range I would say. Our coyotes are in the 30# range. de Quote Link to post
snoopdog 1,256 Posted December 28, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 28, 2006 he was telling me how he used to catch hares aswell and that the keepers used to make little holes on the bottom of dry stone walls ..i think he said they were called snoose holes somthing like that anyway..they were used for snareing stoats and weasals..and what he used to do was rub his hand on all of the holes exsept one and when it got dark the hares used to come of the moore and they used to use these hole to enter the fieds to graze so when they smelt his scent they wouldnt go threw exsept for the one he didnt scent up.. he would wait there ..and bingo..he told me he once got fourteen in one night ..i dont no how true this is but it was very good listening...i could go on and on ... Quote Link to post
Guest mucker Posted December 29, 2006 Report Share Posted December 29, 2006 sounds like a good old boy snoopdog. cant say what hunting was like in his day fox populations and all that but i cant say ive noticed a difference in size of fox townies or otherwise. some of the biggest fox ive seen were townies . Quote Link to post
Guest Ditch_Shitter Posted December 29, 2006 Report Share Posted December 29, 2006 Cracking Thread! Let's have another installment, please! And I'm with Witton on the Cats! Quote Link to post
dai dog 11 Posted December 29, 2006 Report Share Posted December 29, 2006 yes the big cats! please snoop! Quote Link to post
blackdug 90 Posted December 29, 2006 Report Share Posted December 29, 2006 that story about scenting there run fro,s except one is true, seen my father do it all his life and i remember him telling me his father had taught him this as well ..also the story about the fox population is 100%true in my area ..liked your story ...good reading Quote Link to post
Kane 2 Posted December 29, 2006 Report Share Posted December 29, 2006 Jackanory time yet again...............perhaps he needs to get out more.......a lot of very big foxes in towns .If foxes are so territorial how come you can get 5 or 6 foxes coming to the same call at the same time all independant yet all coming from the same general direction.If anything the boom in the fox population is through a lack of keepers not an abundance of them,maybe there are more game birds and more shoots but the number of keepers employed to look after those birds is a lot less. Definatly more foxes in towns and a lot of them are in very good shape they havnt been pushed there by country foxes LOL they would have trouble pushing them across the M25. Quote Link to post
snoopdog 1,256 Posted December 29, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 29, 2006 Jackanory time yet again...............perhaps he needs to get out more.......a lot of very big foxes in towns .If foxes are so territorial how come you can get 5 or 6 foxes coming to the same call at the same time all independant yet all coming from the same general direction.If anything the boom in the fox population is through a lack of keepers not an abundance of them,maybe there are more game birds and more shoots but the number of keepers employed to look after those birds is a lot less.Definatly more foxes in towns and a lot of them are in very good shape they havnt been pushed there by country foxes LOL they would have trouble pushing them across the M25. these are just his views and i thought quiet alot of them made good sense you are entiteled to your oppion just like everbody else..you seem to no quiet alot kane is that all you have to say ..???at certain times of year the fox is very terrotrial...when you have several foxes coming in at one time they are proberly juveniles ..and or young vixens as they dont seem to get pushed out as much as the young dog fox ..mabye its you who needs to get out more instead of waiting round the m25 for road kill... Quote Link to post
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.