As most of us are painfully aware, the grey fox has practically disappeared in many Midwest states..
Illinois has officially closed the season on them.
I’m not a wildlife biologist by any stretch of imagination,, but I have been thinking about something,,, and maybe it’s already been taken into consideration…

In states where the raccoon population has virtually exploded to over 600 percent… grey fox populations have significantly decreased… is it possible, that the raccoon spread parvo and canine distemper to the greys, in numbers to where the grey fox can’t recover due to other contributing factors like coyotes and competition for resources?

Has anyone else thought of this??

Maybe. They compete for many of the same resources also.

Hardly a new theory. It's no coincidence in my area that had major distemper outbreaks in the mid 00s that grey did and skunks practically disappeared here and the raccoon population still hasn't really recovered here.

How much habitat has disappeared in the last 50 years grey fox were common in the industrial parks that outlined the Chicago suburbs? So how much statewide damage has taken place in that time.

We have a really good grey fox population here.and coons to go with em

We now have grey fox in northern Maine.Maybe they moved here

Back in the same time frame there was something going through the coon population. you would find dead coon usually close to water that didn't appear sick. No matted eyes or puffy noses. Looked like just laid down and went to sleep.

i have no doubt it's coyotes in my area, we had red and grey fox everywhere 30 years ago and hardly any coyotes

as the coyotes population went up you could see the fox population dropping instantly

Check out the Trap House podcast from Hoosier Trapping. They just did an interview with their Indiana biologist and I believe distemper was an issue although I don't think coons were mentioned as a direct relationship.

Hard to avoid raccoons if you're in a grey fox area. Most of the greys I catch or well used to catch were mostly in raccoon sets.

Same here

When I was a boy we had lots of red and Grey's no coyotes. Now alot of coyotes a few reds very very few Grey's

Some kind of disease. Haven’t caught one in 30 years but since the season is closed that guarantees me I’ll catch one this year. The part that gets me the grays have been non existent for years but the DNR is only worried about otters and bobcats that are everywhere until this year

In Central IL there is a lot of cover but 50 years ago it was multifloral roses and we had quail and pheasants. I never saw a turkey till I was about 30. We only started hunting deer in the late 60's. So now the rose buses are gone and it' honeysuckle 12' tall where nothing else grows under t. Turkeys and deer, coyotes everywhere. No Pheasants or quail- not many rabbits either for that matter. The woods look different now. We still have some reds but not like when I was a kid.

Nothing has changed much with the habitat here in deep southern Georgia in the past 30 years, but grey fox populations are now almost non-existent. Became very noticeable about 12 years ago. I was catching 150 to 200 greys trapping only a few weeks in January & February. Then it went to rarely seeing a grey fox track.

Wife says I'm the reason...lol

There are a few greys left here & there, but there used to be a pair behind every bush.

My theory: distemper or other disease..... that they cannot recover from.

…. Same thing happened here

They never decreased here, the reds decreased for a few years, but are back now in equal numbers to the grays.

For those who speculate the coyotes decimated their grays, remember grays like cover and climb trees....And they fight better than reds.

The coyotes never budged the grays here, just the reds, but now the reds seem to have them figured out.

They have a very small home range.
They take time to repopulate.
While I trapped the same two lines for
50 years of course I saw decline.
When the price spiked everyone
was looking their way.
I caught a dozen that season while a friend
that travels and hunts took 40.
Both of us working full time.
Many have opinions, few are a true gauge.
My 2 cents. I like these topics.

Coyotes never affected the grey fox here either. Some of the highest grey fox pockets I trapped also had a good coyote population.

Yes, the grays and coyotes seem fairly compatible, they are both native to our country and not naturally invasive like the reds.

Coyotes & Grays have been co-existing out west forever.

A Grey Fox was a rare sight in all but the southern couple tiers of counties in Michigan when I was growing up in the 50's and 60's. I saw my first one in my central lower peninsula county in 1972. They were practically unheard of in the U.P. and northern lower. I have lived in the northern lower now for well over 40 years and in that time they went from nonexistent to very common in about 20 years. Then, around the mid 2000's, I took in 3 to either tan or mount livesize in a 2-3 week time..........that folks had walked up on laying dead. One fellow found two like that! I suspected distemper at the time. Locally they became scarce again. It has been several years since I last saw one.

Greys have a small home range as said before, they also don’t disperse like red foxes. That being the case there is some inbreeding, which over time causes them to have lower resistance to disease and” INFECTION”. When the state was tagging trapped greys and releasing them most didn’t make it thru the winter.most had no visible foot damage. I think over time, after I’m dead, they will come back. Like swamp said they are scarce in Ga., the first time I lived there I caught them everywhere, I then left for 4 years. when I moved back they were very scarce. I have been catching more every year since I moved back to Ohio. Evan saw a road kill this summer.
They are my favorite fur.
I also think there are less incidentals as most coyote trapping in the east is in more open area, away from brush.

I’ll say that coyotes are probably a secondary threat to the greys,,, I agree wholeheartedly with the aforementioned statement that greys are able to escape coyotes more readily than reds because of their ability to climb trees.
There’s a primary cause…the interbreeding and making them susceptible to a lower immunity does make sense.

… every other time I catch one a coyote kills it

My father owns a couple of properties that have greys on them. One actually has a healthy family of them on it. If I catch them I release them. Another property I hunt I once saw a mating pair strolling though. All in all I see more greys than reds. Coons devastate our turkey population around here. My father’s friend had several trail cameras set up at turkey nest sites. Coons ate almost all eggs.

Hey Savell. Are they just killing it, or ripping it out of the trap and dragging it off?

i try to avoid grays around here at all cost, mostly pan tension, but still catch a handful a year.

When I trapped heavily and cats were worth some folding money I'd have more cat sets wrecked by grey fox than anything else. If temps warmed any they'd want to roll on my set. It took one caught by the skin on its neck to figure out what the issue was.

Not buying that for basically a complete disappearance. Here we still have cedar bluffs and rough land that gray fox loved. We once had a good population here now there are basically none. It’s definitely disease related imo. Be in coon related or not I tend to think it may be coyote being a disease vector also. Coon numbers have increased but as gray fox disappeared coyotes started exploding at the same time period. Catching them in 220 coon trails was quite common in the 90s.

…. I think you know their mo lol

We've never had coyotes, only reds and greys. Our greys are gone, at least where I am. I would catch a dozen incidentals targeting reds... last year trapping reds didn't even see a roadkill. Reds numbers have increased if anything. Disease is my guess... Our DNR has asked to report any grey bycatch and location, that's how far they have declined.

I have read where greys are very susceptable to distemper, which means animals such as coon, ferrel cats etc. which distemper impacts but not as strongly as greys may cause the organisms to be in the area or region more and thus greys are less likely to survive. When I first started trapping where I live now in the early 1980s I caught 1 or maybe two each year. I caught the first coyote here in 1984. I have not caught a grey since.

Bryce

Coons decimate turtle nests here and the sandbars are full of egg shells