One of the many lies we have been told about Tasmanian foxes is that baiting with 1080 doesn’t produce any dead fox carcasses: “They go to their dens and die peacefully”.
Absolute nonsense, I have personally witnessed many dead and dying foxes that have taken a 1080 fox bait on our other mainland property at Yea near Seymour, Victoria.
Just after the neighbours have baited (we never baited because of the threat to working dogs and the practice is simply barbaric). … I have shot the poor beggars in a state of sheer pain and terror, completely disoriented with a look of fear and horror in their eyes as they try and navigate their way around simple obstacles such as a log or a fence in the middle of a wide open paddock.
The attached photos show plenty of dead 1080 poisoned foxes …
Note particularly photo line five and sixteen: here
Foxes are hard to spotlight and shoot … nonsense, I have personally shot twenty five red foxes in one night using a vehicle, spotlight and a ‘scoped .22/250 Sako rifle. I have walked into a paddock at night and shot four foxes within a couple of hundred meters of one another, two of them sitting on their haunches wondering if the shooting noise might result in a feed in the form of a dead rabbit, hare or ‘roo.
The most reliable method of gauging fox numbers according to knowledgeable wildlife experts is using a spotlight for counting individual foxes.
Foxes are hard to call up with a predator whistle and shoot, nonsense:
We have been constantly told foxes are very cryptic animals and therefore you very rarely ever see them, doesn’t make sense either, why then have we had three thousand fox sightings in Tasmania … but not one of the three thousand opportunity’s photographed or shot?
Foxes become very trusting of people they know and see regularly, I have personally seen foxes in people’s back yards in Melbourne suburbs and playing early in the morning around Melbourne and Sydney inner city parks and gardens.
Before the usual apologists defend the fox numbers ratio I would like to say I accept the Tasmanian situation, however ten years at $9,290.00 per day since day one and not one fox trapped, shot, recovered from 1080 poison baiting or even photographed is just not a plausible scenario.
After eleven years either the fox hunters are painfully incompetent or there are no foxes in Tasmania, take your pick because it can be only one the of two scenarios.
