So the Fighting Fox picture that we posted yesterday reminded me of my favorite hunting story and I thought I would share it with all of you. After all, soon hunting season will be upon us again and hopefully we will have new hunting stories to share…so for today, I will tell you about the very first time I hit the woods and my eventful encounter with a wily fox.
As you may remember from my Beginner Bow hunter story, I used to live in Virginia where I was born and raised. I visited Andy on the weekends during our first couple of years dating and therefore, I couldn’t hunt in Maryland without an expense that a college student couldn’t afford. The very first time that Andy took me out to chase a blood trail was a very cold Saturday night in January. Andy had been out in the woods near our house hunting by himself, when he shot a nice doe at sunset. He decided to hike back for me to get my first experience trailing and field dressing a deer.
I bundled up in a pair of his old camo overalls and put about a thousand layers on underneath for warmth. I remember thinking that I had to feel like the marshmallow man from the movie, Ghostbusters. However, as soon as Andy showed me what a blood trail on the dry leaves looked like, I was hooked. I forgot all about the cold wind, or anything else for that matter, I was just entranced on finding his trophy. After about 45 minutes, we located his doe in a bunch of brush that partially hide her.
This is where my story differs from any other hunting adventure. A few minutes before we found our doe, we noticed that a fox was following us always keeping about 20 yards between it and us. Andy assured me that the fox was more scared of us than we were of it. However, not this fox!! About the same time that we noticed our doe, so did the fox and he beat us to it. Andy tried to scare it off but it was either sick or really hungry because that fox stood his ground. Obviously, he thought that our trophy was his dinner. Andy finally fought the fox off of the doe and we start dragging her out of the woods as fast as we can run pulling a large doe. The fox decided that he was not going to give his dinner up without a fight and followed us all the way into our yard and up on our deck!!. A large stick and buck knife were our only weapons since Andy had dropped off his bow when he had come home to get me. We ended up field dressing that doe on a tarp on our deck that night and lost part of the hindquarter thanks to that fox. I’m still not sure how we managed it but somehow we got our doe field dressed, wrapped in the tarp and kept in the trunk of our car to protect it from that fox. Usually, we would have hung her in a tree for a couple days, but not that night.
To this day it is one of the strangest events that I have had happen in the woods yet. As a result, I have a new found respect for hungry foxes. Seeing our trial cam photo this week of two foxes fighting and growling reminded me of that night.
Have you had a similar incident with any animals during your hunting adventures?
