Britain’s biggest foxes
Our search for Britain’s biggest fox starts here. We already have details of a 26lb fox. You can read about it The Sunday Times – and about how cosseted urban foxes are getting bigger and bigger.
Thanks to the publicity, we are now investigating claims of foxes of up to 34lb. See our forthcoming 5th January 2011 programme for full details of the biggest so far.
For the Fieldsports Channel viewer who provides the best story of the biggest fox by 9 January 2011, we are giving away a super Rivers West Frontier camouflage jacket worth £95.
- -- Do you have a big fox story? Email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with details
- -- For enquiries about the competition, please contact Charlie Jacoby on 07850 195353
- -- Do you have a fox problem? Click here to see our films on foxshooting
- -- Do you want your fox problems solved? Buy our super ‘Foxing’ DVD
A boy called Archie, 7, and Keith Talbot's 26lb fox from Maidstone
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To start with, the winner looked like Keith Talbot’s 26lb fox from Maidstone in Kent. A typical well-fed urban fox, it killed Keith’s parents’ cat Amber just before Christmas 2010. Keith baited and killed the old dog fox in return.
The biggest British fox seen by foxshooting expert Robert Bucknell, author of Foxing with Lamp & Rifle, is also 26lb and comes from Suffolk, though Robert says he has heard anecdotal evidence of even bigger foxes. He says that urban foxes are often large and adds that there is a north Norfolk strain that also grows big.
Dennis Rowsell with his 34lb fox
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However, our competition has turned up even bigger foxes. So far, the hot contender for the prize is Fieldsports Channel viewer and keen shooter Dennis Rowsell of Somerset. He was lamping rabbits and foxes with his .204 in March 2009 near the North Somerset coast when he took this incredible 34lb animal at 120 yards. It is a huge dog fox and old, too, with lots of rotten teeth.
We are also investigating a claim by a shooter to have shot a 44lb fox in Mill Hill, North London, in 1963, which measured 5ft 1in in length. ("Almost impossible to believe you could go shooting there and no-one batted an eyelid," he writes. "Try doing that now").
Daryl Barnard and 33lb fox
Meanwhile, Fieldsports Channel viewer and Hampshire pest controller Daryl Barnard sent in this picture of a 33lb fox. He says: “It was shot on an arable farm so it hadn’t been feeding on lambs - just rodents and birds. It was on one of the farms north of Winchester which I cover.”
Daryl shot it on 27 March 2005 in dry conditions, so he can confirm that, when he weighed it, the fur was not wet. “I have shot hundreds up to 28lb but never seen or shot one as big as that one,” he says. “We spotted him in the middle of a barley field, 120 yards out. He was walking away from us but kept stopping to look back as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Because the shot wasn’t safe I had to manoeuvre the truck so that I had a good backstop. By know the fox was ranged at 182 yards. I zoomed the scope right up and placed the cross hairs on his head. As he looked back again I squeezed the shot off.
“After hearing the crack of bone, we walked with lamp for ages and found this massive dog fox in lovely condition lying in a ‘tram track’ shot in the head. I have a lot of photos of this fox one which hangs on wall in lounge.”
We have had several foxes weighing 20lb-30lb. One viewer recalls bolting a fox a little over 20lb from a large earth near Whipsnade Zoo in the mid 1960s. He writes: "It was shot because it seemed to be escaping from the fox net covering the hole. It was weighed on the farm Salter scales simply because it was so much bigger than any of the foxes I had killed previously. I sent the body to a taxidermist and he also commented on the size of the animal and on its superb condition. The foxes in this area had easy access to the many dead piglets that were dumped daily behind a nearby giant pig farm (at the time the largest pig farm in Europe). Following this fox I started to weigh most of the larger foxes I killed and can state that the second largest dog fox I ever killed weighed 17.5lbs and the largest vixen a shade over 16lbs both of these animals coming from the same area as the big fox mentioned above."
Another viewer writes: "Just after I left school I went to work on the local grouse moors as a gamekeeper on one of the YTS schemes. This would have been in the early 1980s. This was on the moors above Buxton in Derbyshire. One morning we had a report of a fox that had been run over on the Buxton to Macclesfield road and that it was unusually big. I went up on my moped to have a look, there on the side of the road was the fox and it was a size! I took it back and weighed it coming in at 29½ lb the length was as high as my shoulder - I am 5ft 10in - the brush was long but the weight came from its gut. The fox though large and leggy had a big belly, it was mid winter and it was a dog fox. I had my suspicions at the time that this may have been one that had been released as it was so fat. I skinned the animal out and had the pelt cured, I had it for years but sadly no longer have it. When it was cured there was a bit on the head where the fur came out, I presume where the car had hit it. "
Colin Leatherbarrow and 'Tyson'
There is no question that big foxes take on legendary qualities. Colin Leatherbarrow, a viewer and pest controller from Manchester was delighted to bring down a fox nicknamed locally as ‘Tyson’. He says: “It was a BIG dog fox. I eventually shot it one evening in foul weather with my .222 at 100 yards after it crept out of the wood where it lived.”
Colin weighed it and, though not huge by the standards of other foxes listed here, at 14lb 8oz it was enough to earn itself its legendary status.
Another rural fox, this one lived close to a National Trust property in Cheshire where, says Colin, “there is lots of 'foxy' food”.
