The population seems so low these days...anyone get very many? Some elders tell me fox trapping & hunting used to be popular around here. Now I don't know anyone that does it. I suppose there's pockets of decent numbers but not enough around here to bother. I suppose they can't compete well w/ bobcat & yotes & wolves.

Use to get 30 to 40 a Season mostly reds about 10 to 12 greys mixed in. No coyotes back then, it was kind of a treat to see a coyote . That was back in the 70's Reds were bringing good money. I think the most I got was 78.00 This year I caught 3 reds so far and released them, not many fox around anymore and a lot of coyotes .This was on our family farm 200 acres

Yes, it sounds like a fair number of people release them.

Back In the day the state paid a $5.00 bounty and the county paid a $5.00 bounty on red fox. We hunted and trapped them year around. Guys killing 400 red fox wasn't un common.
Know you can't find a red fox track If you tried. But It wasn't the bounty that killed them off It had to be a habitat change and the coyotes that did In the red fox around here. We even had a good population of grey fox.

I haven't caught a red fox In 10 years or so. And It's been longer then that on the grey fox.

Maybe they don't get along with fisher. Who knows

Did northern WI ever have a viable red fox population. My buddy Lives In Oconto County and he does catch a few reds but not many.

I have been seeing more reds and greys up in Forest and Florence counties the past few years. Could be from a decline in the coyote population ,I think the wolf population is keeping the coyote numbers in check , could also be parvo and mange doing its dirty deed ? But there sure is no shortage of wolves !!

Way less yotes around here the past 2 years. Maybe the fox population will rise.

We have a few around the Eau Claire area but they're pretty hard to come by. I caught 2 last year and none this year but I don't trap many farms for canines. The farms I trap are some my father used to trap in the 70's, 80's and early 90's. He'd take around 80 every year and a coyote was considered a trophy back then. NOT SO MUCH NOW. Ha! I'd love to see them come back but the lack of dairy farms has really changed the way the land is worked. This is just my opinion though.

you got that right. Very true.

I would second the idea that farming practices have had an impact. The old cornpickers on tractors are no match for the new ones. Fields are now taken out all the way both horizontally and vertically leaving virtually no cover. The new methods increase yields but at the cost of cover.

In the old days the farmer didn't do any field work after harvest Now as soon as the crop Is harvested It's time to plow or the corn stubble gets choped and baled. The other thing was no one planted soy beans. And herbicides and pesticides were not all that common. The corn rows were all weed choked great wildlife cover. And we had fence rows.

My first red fox was trapped in a trail on top the ice that hugged the cattails back in the 60s. I became, IMO, a fairly decent fox trapper back then. No coyotes. But so many red fox. All blind sets in that trail in the snow using waxed paper. Would wire off to a dead limb in the cattails. Those days are gone.

I’ve been at the same residence in oconto county for the last 10 years. Ive caught a few coyotes and bobcats on my property regularly, but this is the first year for red fox. Caught 4. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of coyote traffic by me this year, maybe that’s why the reds are around....?

Caught 3 fox total last year, and that was only on one property. This year every property I’ve hit has foxes in numbers and I’m not setting for them.