New Forest Fox Numbers

	Foxes are always alert to danger

Recent estimates suggest a population of around 300 Foxes in the New Forest, but gauging numbers of Foxes is never easy, whilst meaningful comparison with days-gone-by is even more difficult.

New Forest Fox numbers in the 1780s, though, are known to have been at a very low ebb, and uncontrolled hunting by a number of Fox-hound packs was intense. Better regulation of visiting Fox-hound packs followed, and Fox numbers, at least to some extent, recovered.

But for the first 80 years of the 19th century, the Fox record books are largely silent, although the shooting diaries of Colonel Peter Hawker provide circumstantial evidence from other parts of Hampshire and, in particular, the coastal area around Keyhaven, and the Test valley at Longparish, where Hawker had homes.

The Colonel’s diaries cover the period from 1802 until his death in 1853, and exhaustively record details of shooting forays during which just about anything that moved was taken. Large bags of pheasants, partridges and waterfowl regularly feature, and hares and rabbits, too, yet there is no reference at all to Foxes. Does this suggest an absence of Foxes? It seems highly likely, or at the very least, Fox presence only in very small numbers, unless, of course, the Colonel reserved his notes only for things that could be eaten!

	Fox den with feather remains

More details of Fox numbers are available for the period between 1880 and 1914 when Gerald Lascelles was Deputy Surveyor of the New Forest. Lascelles was a keen Fox hunting man and also a meticulous note-taker. As Deputy Surveyor, he was also responsible for ensuring that Foxes were available for the hunt.

Lascelles reported with pride that during his period in office, ‘the supply of wild Foxes did not fail’ and that by 1914, when he retired, there was ‘as fine a show of Foxes in the New Forest as the country had ever produced’.

He went on to add, though, that the New Forest ‘was somewhat over-hunted’, and noted that following a 1890s nationwide epidemic of vulpine mange, Foxes for hunting were scare in many parts of Britain. Indeed, there was local concern that ‘the great scarcity of Foxes reported to the Lord Warden in 1789, was again upon us.’

But whilst the fears for a while proved largely unfounded, the naturalist Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald in his 1960s book Town Fox, Country Fox noted that in 1914 a large-scale Fox mange outbreak started in the New Forest and spread with decimating effect eastwards as far as the Kent coast – this, presumably, was shortly after Lascelles left the area, or maybe he just conveniently omitted reference.

Elsewhere in many parts of 19th century Britain, Foxes were relatively scarce. In fact, until 1914, Foxes were imported from abroad for the benefit of the hunt, and transported to final destinations using the burgeoning railway system.

The Reverend Francis Kilvert, for example, writing in 1873 about the Radnorshire and West Herefordshire Fox-hounds refers to a ‘bag Fox’, that is, a Fox deliberately released into the countryside to be hunted – the Fox was ‘kept in a darkened cellar so long that he was dazed and half-blind when he was turned out’ to be hunted.

Fox imports ceased with the outbreak of the First World War, and never, as far as is known, resumed. Then, the country had far higher priorities than Fox hunting and gamekeeping, which allowed Fox numbers to recover. (The same effect was noticed during the Second World War, when Fox numbers also apparently greatly increased).

For centuries, then, Fox hunting, shooting, trapping and poisoning have threatened the Fox, but have thankfully never managed to completely exterminate this beautiful animal from our shores.

References:
The New Forest – A Natural History: Colin R. Tubbs
Town Fox, Country Fox: Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald
Thirty-five Years in the New Forest: Gerald Lascelles
Kilvert’s Diary: The Reverend Francis Kilvert