The Vinita daily chieftain. [volume] (Vinita, Indian Territory [Okla.]) 1902-1913, 1903-04-20
REYNARD NOT SO SLY.
The Red Fox's Canning Has Been Ex-
aggerated, Thinks an Old
Maine Hunter.

nxEerote0, Tmnkn IN Oho
Maine Hunter.
.When the Lord changed the color
Of fox's fur from red to black Or
gray" said Jason Norton, the aged
fox hunter of Penobscot Valley, ac-
cording to the New York Sun, "he
gave the favored animals new skill in
self-protection and fitted them out
with brains of larger capacity.
II have hunted foxes for more than
forty years and / have killed more
than a thousand. OF this number
seventy-fve or eighty were cross
foxes, whose pelts are worth from
$40 to $75 to-day, fourteen were black
foxes and eight were silver grays.
"If red fox were half as cunning
as they say he is, he would never be
shot ahead of the dogs. So long as
there is plenty of room for a fox to
run in and the room is in a direct
line, he can distance the best dog lv-
ing at the quarter post and get so far
away in half day that the hunters
could not see him again for week.
"But a red fox hasn't learned that
a straight line is the shortest dis
tance between two points, which
shows that he has never studied geo.
metry. AS soon as he hears a dog
yipping behind him he sits down and
studies bit to make sure if he is the
fox that is picked for the chase.
"If he finds out that the dogs are
after another fox, the chances are
that he will be envious and will spend
a lot of time cutting across his rivals
trail and trying to confuse the dogs,
s'No sooner is red fox sure that
he is selected for the hunt than he
loses all caution and devotes his ener-
gies to having fun with the dogs. He
climbs up the trunks of leaning trees
for the sake of leaping off intos the
distant snowdrifts, he teeters along
the top Of rail fences and sneaks
down the channels of running brooks,
hoping that the water will kill the
scent.
"After being funny for a time, he
will sit down on sunny knoll and
listen and laugh to hear the dogs
swear about him. He will do these
tricks until the dogs are tired and
mad clear through, and then he will
begin to run in circle so he can
keep the dogs within earshot all the
time.
"And this is what finishes him up,
for as soon as the hunters learn that
he is moving in a curve, they calcu-
late the diameter of his circuit, cut
across to head him off, and the next
time he comes around smiling at the
joke he is playing on the dogs, he IS
met in the face with a charge of dou
BILE B shot and he never laughs again.
"No one ever knew black fox or a
silver fox to be guilty of such folly.
As soon as a fox with costly over
coat on his back hears the dogs bel
lowing behind him he shifts around a
bit to learn the direction of the wind
and is off to windward at the rate OF
thirty miles an hour
"As he keeps his nose to the wind
all the time, he can smell ont any
danger that may be ahead of him, and
so long as he keeps running he is
sure that nothing can overtake him
from behind. If the dogs happen to
be of the long-legged kind, such as
they use in England, the fox has to
stir his feet pretty lively for few
hours, but when the dogs grow tired,
he settles down to an easy lope OF
twelve or fifteen miles an hour and
does not stop until he is 100 miles
away.
meantime the dogs drop out as
they grow tired and go wandering
about in the woods trying to make
a shortcut for home. They haul up
at farm houses along the way to rest,
and the last one is not captured for
week. By this time the fox will
have returned to his old feeding
grounds and had a nice long rest, so
he will be ready for another run.
at is my candid belief that il all
the foxes in Maine were put together
so we could look them over, the
blacks and silver grays combined
would equal the number OF reds. They
are gaining in numbers every year
too. The reason why we do not shoot
them is because they are wiser and
less humorous than their red cous-