Fox Hunt in Crimea: Red, Steppe, and Mountain Fox Species and Hunting Guide

Fox hunting is both a practical form of wildlife management and, in its mounted form, one of the oldest field sports in the world. In Crimea the conditions for fox breeding are especially favourable, which makes fox hunting here genuinely rewarding, and the wider tradition — from lone stalkers with a homemade call to the ceremonial mounted packs of England and North America — offers many ways to pursue the animal. This guide covers the fox itself, its behaviour and breeding, the practical methods of hunting it, the equipment and safety that beginners need, the legal framework, and the long history of fox hunting as a sport.

What does a fox look like and which species exist?

The fox found across most of the region is the common red fox (Red Fox, Vulpes vulpes), a species distributed almost everywhere in the country. Foxes vary widely in coat colour and size depending on climate and terrain, and even within a single area you can meet distinctly different local forms. Worldwide the genus is diverse: alongside the familiar Red Fox and the North American Gray Fox, there are regional species such as the Bat-eared Fox of Africa and the Pampas Fox of South America.

The steppe fox

The Crimean steppe fox looks as though it has been bleached by the southern sun, wearing a slightly paler coat than its northern relatives.

That greyish tone, set against faded steppe vegetation, is effective camouflage that helps the fox escape both the talons of an eagle and the sharp eye of a hunter.

The mountain fox

A second subspecies, the mountain fox, occurs in the wooded highlands and differs clearly from the steppe form. The mountain fox has brighter colouring, a fuller, more luxuriant coat and a noticeably larger head.

How do red and gray foxes differ?

The Red Fox and the Gray Fox differ in colour, build and habits, and telling them apart is a basic skill for anyone identifying quarry in North America. The Red Fox has a reddish-orange coat, black legs and a white-tipped tail, prefers open country and farmland, and cannot climb. The Gray Fox is smaller, grizzled grey with rusty flanks, has a black-tipped tail, favours brush and woodland, and is unusual among canids in that it climbs trees to escape danger or reach food. Where their ranges overlap, this climbing ability is often the quickest way to confirm you are looking at a Gray Fox rather than a Red Fox.

Fox fur and its value

Fox fur is highly prized, but its quality depends entirely on the conditions in which the animal lives. In Crimea mechanised farming does the fox and its cubs no harm: it rears its young in earths, food is plentiful, and because the ground freezes neither deeply nor for long, catching mice — the fox's staple food — is not difficult. Well-fed animals in a mild climate grow the dense winter pelt that gives the species commercial worth.

The fox as a predator

The fox is a quick-witted predator, and while the tales of its cunning — the animal is affectionately called Reineke in European folklore — may be exaggerated by hunters, there is a real grain of truth in them. Not every animal manages to feast on hare meat, yet the fox does so regularly.

Fox behaviour and habits when hunting

Every movement a hunting fox makes is precise, calculated and seemingly deliberate. When mousing, the fox freezes in place and listens intently, then makes a sharp leap towards the spot where a mouse has squeaked; if it misses, it patiently repeats the whole sequence from the start. This same alertness governs its wider behaviour — a fox reads the wind, uses cover, and adjusts its route the moment it senses something wrong, which is exactly why hunters must approach from downwind.

How the fox hunts: mousing and hunting ground squirrels

Ground squirrels make up a large part of the Crimean steppe fox's diet, and watching it hunt them is even more instructive than watching it mouse. The fox will lie motionless for hours beside a rodent's burrow until the occupant finally emerges. It will also never pass up the chance to take the chicks of quail, partridge, lark or pheasant when the opportunity arises.

How a fox evades danger

A fox escapes threats by combining speed, terrain knowledge and constant use of scent and wind. It doubles back on its own trail, runs along hard or wet ground to break its scent line, dives into dense thickets, and heads for a network of earths where it can go to ground. The fox's natural enemies include eagles and larger predators such as the Bobcat and the Coyote, and its pale steppe colouring is itself an evasion tactic, blending into faded grass to defeat both airborne and human eyes.

How does the fox breed?

Fox breeding follows a clear annual cycle built around a late-winter mating season, a spring litter reared underground, and a summer in which the cubs grow towards independence.

The rutting season and mating

In February and March you can often hear the hoarse, abrupt barking of dog foxes. They race from place to place, sometimes gathering in large groups and immediately starting fierce fights.

This is the rutting season, when foxes begin to mate. A single male — the strongest, the winner of the fights — stays with the vixen, so that strong cubs are born of a strong sire in a form of natural selection. After mating the dog fox remains with the vixen and helps prepare the earth and care for the young. Gestation lasts 52 to 56 days.

The earth and the litter

A vixen always whelps in an earth, which she digs on dry, raised ground. The earth has many side passages, sometimes forming a genuine labyrinth that is hard to make sense of. The number of cubs varies but usually does not exceed five or six. The cubs are born blind and open their eyes only on the thirteenth to fifteenth day.

How the cubs develop

Fox cubs develop quickly. Within a month of birth they come to the surface, bask in the sun and sometimes stray twenty or thirty metres from the earth, bolting back to their refuge at the slightest hint of danger and sitting it out inside.

By midsummer the cubs range comparatively far from the earths, catching grasshoppers, beetles and lizards, while the adult foxes still bring them food. Only in August do the cubs leave the parental earth and begin to live independently.

Seasonal moult and the value of the fur

A fox moults in spring, which is why its summer coat has little value. By late autumn, around November, the fur grows long, thick and fluffy — and it is for this coat that the animal is prized, having earned the well-deserved name of "red beast." By this time young foxes are so well furred that they are hard to tell from adults.

Methods and techniques of hunting the fox

There are several established ways to hunt the fox, from mounted pursuit with hounds and going to ground with terriers to calling, driven hunts and stalking with a rifle. In Crimea the two most productive approaches are hunting with hounds in the foothill forests and hunting with earth dogs, but calling, driving and combined hunts all have their place, and the choice depends on the terrain, the season and the equipment available.

Hunting with hounds in the foothill forests

The most valuable foxes are taken by those who keep good foxhounds and hunt in the foothill forests. This is demanding work: you have to be a well-trained person to spend a whole day walking the hills, forcing your way through thickets of young oak, rosehip and dogwood. Trained hounds work the covert, pick up the fox's scent and drive it towards waiting guns, and their behaviour is directed by voice, horn and the crack of a hunting whip. The same breeding and pack instincts underpin the ceremonial mounted packs used elsewhere in the world, where breeds such as the Walker, Trigg and traditional English Foxhound are maintained by hunt clubs for their nose, voice and stamina.

Hunting with earth dogs (fox terriers)

More and more hunters now keep earth dogs — fox terriers — for working a fox that has gone to ground. Originally acquired by the society of hunters and anglers, these dogs have bred on and now show high standards of work, entering the earth to bolt the fox towards the guns or to hold it until it is dug out. A good terrier is compact enough to follow the fox through a narrow labyrinth of side passages and bold enough to face it underground.

Calling the fox: the call and the technique of luring

Calling brings the fox to the hunter by imitating the squeak of a mouse or the distress of prey, and a skilled caller can draw an animal in from several hundred metres. The hunter works from downwind, stays low and hidden, and gives a few short, high squeaks on a call; a hunting fox, primed to react to the sound of a mouse, will usually turn and come without hurry. If the fox is distracted, the caller repeats the sound sparingly rather than overusing it, which would make the animal suspicious.

Driven hunts and night hunting

Driven hunts and night hunting are two further methods suited to open steppe and to periods when foxes move freely. In a driven hunt a line of beaters pushes foxes out of cover towards a standing line of guns, which is effective across large fields where hounds would tire. Night hunting relies on the fox's habit of moving after dark, using a light and a call to locate and bring in the animal, and it demands particular care over safety and over the local rules that govern shooting after dark.

Hunting the fox together with the hare and other animals

Fox hunting in Crimea is usually combined with hare hunting, and few people pursue the fox as a specialist quarry on its own. Even so, there are connoisseurs of this absorbing sport, and they often manage to take a pair of fiery-red beauties in a single outing. In North America the fox is frequently pursued alongside the Coyote and the Bobcat, and Coyote hunting in particular has become a common alternative where coyotes have expanded their range and displaced foxes.

A successful hunter: equipment and preparation

Good results in fox hunting depend as much on preparation and equipment as on marksmanship, as the example of one master fox-catcher near Simferopol shows. In winter he recognised no quarry but the fox. He never travelled far — he would catch a passing vehicle, ride out some thirty kilometres, and take to the fields, going out only when the wind was blowing. His kit was always distinguished by especially careful fitting.

At his side, beside the cartridge belt, hung binoculars with twelve-times magnification. With such powerful optics a mousing fox is not hard to find; you only need to scan the ground carefully. This is where the hunter's cunning began: he would work in from the downwind side, settle comfortably about five hundred metres from the fox, and start squeaking on a homemade call. He rarely had to repeat the luring — the fox reacted at once to the mouse squeak and made its way unhurriedly towards him, and if it was distracted he called again. He always shot with large shot, at a sure distance, and left no wounded animals.

The result of such fox hunting was a pair of good pelts taken every week. His success came down to a short list of essentials that any beginner can build on: good boots and clothing for a long day on the hills, high-magnification binoculars for spotting, a reliable call, a shotgun with appropriate shot, and the fitness to keep moving through rough cover.

Safety rules on the hunt

Safety on a fox hunt rests on identifying your target, controlling your muzzle and knowing where every other person and dog is at all times. Practical rules for a driven or calling hunt include the following:

• Never fire until you have positively identified the fox and the ground beyond it.
• Keep the safety on and the muzzle pointed away from people and dogs until you are ready to shoot.
• Know the position of beaters, other guns and working terriers before every shot.
• Use a sure, sensible range and appropriate shot so you make clean kills and leave no wounded animals.
• Take extra care at night, when it is far harder to see people, livestock and dogs.
• Dress for the terrain and weather, and carry water for a long day in the hills.

Legal status and open seasons for fox hunting

The legal status of fox hunting varies sharply by region, so anyone planning a hunt should confirm the local season and licensing first. In most jurisdictions the fox may be taken only within a defined open season — typically late autumn and winter, when the pelt is prime and cubs are independent — and usually requires a state or regional hunting licence. In the United States each state, from Virginia and Pennsylvania to Texas and California, sets its own seasons and licence rules, while in the United Kingdom the mounted pursuit of a live fox with hounds is banned and only alternatives such as trail and drag hunting remain legal.

The fox and the protection of livestock

Fox control is closely tied to protecting poultry and young livestock, which is one of the oldest justifications for hunting the animal. Foxes take chickens, ducks and lambs, so farmers and gamekeepers have long managed local populations to limit losses. Responsible management aims at balance rather than eradication: keeping fox numbers in check where they threaten stock while conserving the species, since the fox also suppresses rodents that damage crops and stored grain.

The history of fox hunting as a traditional sport

Fox hunting as an organised mounted sport grew up in England and spread across the world through empire, migration and railways. The practice traces to the sixteenth century — a hunt in Norfolk around 1534 is often cited as an early instance — but it took its recognisable modern shape in the eighteenth century. Hugo Meynell, working from Leicestershire, bred faster hounds and developed the disciplined pursuit across open country that defined the classic hunt, giving the sport its structure of Master, Huntsman and field.

Through the nineteenth century the Great British Railway network let riders and hounds travel to distant meets, turning fox hunting from a purely local pastime into a national sport tied to social class and country society. It was carried to Ireland, Wales, Scotland and across Colonial America, taking firm root in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, and later to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India and parts of Europe such as Poland.

A mounted hunt runs on a clear hierarchy of roles, each with defined responsibilities:

• Master of Foxhounds (MFH) — the person in overall charge of the hunt, its hounds, its finances and its conduct.
• Huntsman — controls the pack of foxhounds in the field, using voice and horn.
• Whipper-In — assists the Huntsman by keeping the hounds together and turning stragglers back to the pack.
• Field Master — leads the mounted followers (the "field") and keeps them behind the hounds and out of the way of the hunt staff.

In the twentieth century the sport organised itself through bodies such as the Masters of Foxhounds Association in Britain and the Masters of Foxhounds Association of North America, which register hunts and hound packs. At the same time animal-rights activism grew, led in Britain by the Hunt Saboteurs' Association, and culminated in legal bans: the hunting of a live fox with hounds is now prohibited across the United Kingdom, including England, Scotland and Wales. Traditional formal attire — the scarlet or black hunt coat, breeches, boots and cap associated with makers like Thomas Pink — survives in the legal successors to the sport, and dedicated followers such as Georgie Hammond and Josephine Campbell keep its etiquette alive.

In North America the tradition continues actively today. Established hunt clubs — among them the Genesee Valley Hunt and Myopia Hunt in the Northeast, the Middleburg Hunt and Radnor Hunt in the Mid-Atlantic, and many packs across the Carolinas, the South, the Midwest, the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific West — hold regular meets, offer capping days for guests and trial participation for newcomers, and charge membership fees that vary widely by club. Newcomers typically get started by contacting a local Hunt Club, riding as a guest on a capping day, learning field protocol and dress, and then applying for membership; directories such as Hunt Index Canada list packs across Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, and outfitters and platforms such as BookYourHunt.com help arrange visiting hunts.

Drag hunting as an alternative to hunting a live animal

Drag hunting replaces the live fox with an artificial scent trail, so that hounds and riders enjoy the chase and the jumps without any animal being pursued or killed. A "drag" — a cloth soaked in a chosen scent — is dragged over a planned course of fields, hedges and obstacles, and the hounds follow it exactly as they would a fox's line. A closely related practice, clean-boot hunting, uses bloodhounds to follow a human runner's natural scent instead of a fox. Both methods, together with trail hunting, are the legal forms of the sport in the United Kingdom today and allow the tradition, the equestrianism and the social community of fox hunting to continue while sparing the fox itself.