red fox squalling

Took my mom out for supper. Just got home. Thought for a second or two it was a kid or woman screaming.

Had one come through the back yard one morning around 2 , woke the wife and I up .We didn’t know what it was at first, guns a drawn and on the back porch With a spotlight , finally found him .

Danny and Tommie I heard one too yesterday !

It's mating season, males calling for a mate. Peak season around here is February 8-20th most coming in heat around the 12th.

Back in the live market days we may have 500 + fox .
It was quite a serenade in the evening.
I learned about every sound a fox makes.
At my camps they would sing and chatter me to sleep.
On occasions coyotes would respond in the distance.

I used to hear that sound in the wild when I was a kid in NY and it would always get my blood pumping thinking about trapping them.

Then, for about 15 years, we raised foxes and I'd hear it all the time. Always liked the sound, but it didn't make me tingle like it did when I was a kid.

Remember the puppy chatter. Nothing quite like the sound of those little pups calling for mama.

One of the neatest things I experienced live traping fox was one year I decided to jump the gun a little.
I built some live traps that had doors like a colony trap there were two doors on one end and the back was the bait compartment. The first two dens I found the pups had not yet come out . So I placed the traps in front of the main den holes and covered up the other holes. The traps were baited with cat food .
I set traps back from the dens. Hoping to catch the adults before they dug in to get the pups.after 5 or six days no pups and no adults. I decided to give it one more night. I was concerned the pups may parish. That night it rained heavy. So I had to walk in to th dens. One was about 1/4 of a mile from the truck and the other maybe another 1/4 mile past the first den. I walked in expecting empty traps and the first one had 4 little gray pups.3 were in the main box and one was still between the 1st and second door.
So I wired the fist door shut Hoping they would not escape and I went to check the other den.
There were 5 pups in the second trap. I was afraid to pull the traps worried that if there were any pups left that the old ones would have abandoned. So I used my wind breaker as a pouch to tote the fox out. So I returned to my truck with nine small fox pups. On the way to camp I picked up a road killed Jack.
It was toward dark when I got the fox settled in there new den. And gave them a couple of small bowls of water and the Jack. I went to the trailer. Changed into some dry clothes while I had some leftover ham and beans worming on the burner. After I ate I put on the head lamp and went out to Check the pups.
I will never forget this experience. One of the pups had claimed the jackrabbit. Most of the others were eating on the fringes. And one tiny pup sat in the corner of the cage and coward. So I moved that pup to another cage and gave it its own portion of meat and water. I sat on a five gallon bucket for probably close to an hour watching the show until my headlamp started to dim and I started to get chilled.
What an experience that was.

I hear it quite often, all times of year too. Probably because we have a lot of reds in the area. They will pace back and forth just inside the woodline bordering my backyard screaming every couple of minutes.

It drives my dogs nuts. After a while I get tired of the ruckus and let them out to chase the fox off.

Our neighbor girl that has been married and gone for quite a few years. Stopped by with her husband awhile ago and she was reminiscing about our fox and how she misses all the sounds that they made. She also remembered their smell , we had a few hundred of them so it was quite noticable.