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

Yep your on the right track. I watch the grey's here try to regain a foothold and then distemper breaks out and they are gone again.

Wish something would wipe these eastern coyotes out....But the devil takes care of his own, Lol.

I absolutely believe it's distemper or something similar and the extremely dense coon population here in the midwest is the culprit. Yep we have had significant habitat loss, but still have great, large pockets of cover here in the glacial lakes country that always held a number of grays. We had a significant number of grays up until the early 2000's and they have dropped off a cliff since. Still a very few around but almost nonexistent for the amount of cover.

We had some significant die offs of coon over the years, found many at the water holes and creeks just dead, but it didn't seem to knock the population back to a manageable level like it should. Other than a few years I've coon hunted this area consistently since 1978. Raccoon populations even after the die offs are incredible and we are not seeing the die offs at all the last few years. Believe they have developed a resistance to the disease and are a reservoir that keeps our canines including grays at reduced levels. There have been three litters of red fox raised near the house the last couple of years and all succumbed to disease when they were a decent size - swollen eyes, drooping heads and listless.. The adults made it, but the pups didn't.

Now even that being said, our red fox population locally is slowly increasing which is a wonderful thing, Grays are not and coyote numbers are far less than they were several years ago. And hopefully the coyotes all die off and we get some fox back!!

I listened to Charlie's pod cast and believe the biologist is on the right track with the coon population/reservoir of disease and habitat loss.. And unbelievably we still have raccoon seasons here in Indiana and are limited in our ability to thin them out.. Insanity from our game and fish department. They should be a nuisance animal and no regulation until they are under control. My opinion anyways and we know what that is worth!!

I a agree that coyote play a big part of it. Right here we have thinned the coyote out pretty good the last couple years. This year seeing many more red fox.

I have a couple properties close to each other, that I or my family have owned, hunted, and trapped for 70 plus years. Had never seen a Red until I trapped one about 3 years ago. Still see Gray on camera occasionally, and haven’t seen any more Reds. We definitely have more coyotes now than we did 20-30 years ago. You would think the Gray would do better than the Red, sharing with coyotes, since the Gray can climb trees.