In my neck of the woods,In my lifetime, I have killed more than 23,000 fox on my home lines.
11, I believe , were greyfox,all the rest red fox.

Sounds like we've identified two factors if the data is based off trapper catch reports.

Coyotes are worth more to the trapper whether that's for nuisance, live, or just to have property to trap. I would opine that a southern trapper not targeting coyotes is either a beaver trapper or not trapping.

Couple that with no fur market, see above, the coons are out of control. Definite distemper vector.

Add in habitat competition and who knows.

Seems like these biologists need to get out of their air conditioned offices and quit crunching numbers on the computer and do some old fashioned field work.

Something, probably coyotes, killed and ate the red fox that were habituated to me on my farm.
Keith

"Gray and grey are both common spellings of the color between black and white. Gray is more frequent in American English, whereas grey is more common in British English. ... Of the two, gray occurs more frequently in American English, while grey has historically been the spelling preferred by British English publications."

Because there are very few English ancestry people in the Upper Midwest, I think we tend to go with "gray", although this part of the country has the largest hole of having almost no GRAY fox so sort of mute point for us on what version of the word to use...:

Phil,
Do you think that red fox stronghold in your area will hold out in the coming decade or so or will the fox population fade away like other parts of the country?

I thought this exact same thing when they mentioned trapper harvest reports.

I 100% agree with this^^^

Seen videos of trappers taking a grey out of a trap and holding it in their arms like a puppy...without controlling the head. I have caught several hundred grey fox.....probably over a thousand, and have never seen one that I could cradle like that. They are vicious little turds.