Amos Slade

Amos Slade (or simply known as Amos) is the main antagonist of Disney's 1981 animated feature film The Fox and the Hound. He is Tod's former archenemy, Widow Tweed's neighbor, and Chief and Copper's owner.
==Background==
===Personality===
Amos is an old, crabby, grumpy, cranky, and bad-tempered man, though he has a softer side shown in his interaction with his two hunting dogs, Chief and Copper. He can also be civil to Widow Tweed when he chooses to be, though he is often rude to her because he thinks she's daft.
While not completely evil, he just doesn't see his hunting career as a bad thing. But as he develops a grudge toward the Tod the fox, mostly due to several incidents that he suspected the fox to have caused such as attacking his chickens and getting Chief injured, he becomes so obsessed with getting Tod that he is willing to break into an anti-hunting preserve. He later showed remorse for his actions after Tod saves him and Copper from a dangerous bear.
===Physical appearance===
Amos is a slender, elderly man with tan skin, gray hair, and a mustache. His outfit consists of a white undershirt, blue pants, brown boots, and a brown coat. He's almost always seen wearing his olive-green hat.
==Appearances==
===The Fox and the Hound===
Amos is an adjoining neighbor to Widow Tweed and is known to be an avid hunter. At the beginning of the film, he has returned home to introduce his hunting dog Chief to his newly obtained hound puppy Copper, whom he intends to train as a hunting dog. At first, he often has to search for Copper, who runs off to play with Tweed's pet fox Tod. Finally, Amos ties Copper up at his doghouse barrel to keep him from running away. When Tod comes to Amos's property to see what has happened to Copper, Amos is alerted to the young fox's presence by Chief's barks. Amos assumes that the fox is after his chickens (when they were really accidentally let out of the coop during the chaos), and attempts to kill Tod. Tod is able to escape, jumps into the back of Tweed's car, and hides behind Tweed's milk jugs. Amos shoots at Tod but only hits the jugs, causing milk to leak out of them. Tweed stops her car and confronts Amos, calling him a "trigger-happy lunatic." She snatches his gun, blasts the radiator on his car, and fires the last bullet into the air before tossing the empty gun back to him. Amos claims that Tod was indeed after his chickens, but Tweed asserts that the fox would never hurt a thing, warning him that his temper will get him into trouble someday. Amos turns red with rage and threatens Tweed, warning her that should he catch the fox on his property again, he will blast him. He also swears that he won't miss the next time.
Soon after, Amos takes both Copper and Chief on a long hunting trip for the winter. By springtime, Amos has collected a lot of skins and trophies thanks to a fully-grown Copper. The night of their return, Tod comes once again to see Copper, but Chief awakens, sees Tod, and barks at him, again alerting Amos to the fox's presence; seeing Tod, he tries to kill him once more and sends both Copper and Chief after him. While Chief goes after Tod directly, Amos and Copper try to track him down. Copper leads Amos off Tod's trail, allowing him to escape, only for Tod to again run into Chief, who chases him onto a railroad bridge as a train comes in their direction. While Tod ducks under the train, Amos shouts at Chief to jump out of its way, but the train collides into Chief, who tumbles down a steep cliff into a river below and fractures his leg. Later that night, a vindictive Amos storms over to Widow Tweed's house in a mad attempt to kill Tod, but Tweed is able to block him out. Amos vengefully blames Tod for Chief's near-death and warns Tweed that she can't keep Tod locked up forever, which she agrees.
The next morning, Amos sees Tweed taking Tod for a drive as he is bringing some firewood into his house. Later that evening, he and Copper observe her returning home without Tod; he deduces that she dropped the fox off at the game preserve to keep him safe, and concocts a plan to catch Tod involving the use of bear traps.
Two days later, Amos and Copper set foot into the preserve. Amos sets his traps by a small pond, surmising that Tod will need to come to the pond for a drink, and covers them with leaves. Tod almost steps into one, but the sound of Amos cocking his gun alerts him to danger and he retreats, narrowly escaping the traps. Amos and Copper chase Tod, who runs away to a burrow where he lives with a vixen named Vixey. Amos shoots at the foxes who have popped their heads out through the burrow's back end but misses when they retreat. Amos sets fire to some straw and fans flames through the back end before joining Copper at the front end to wait for the foxes to emerge. However, he is surprised when Tod and Vixey escape through an opening in the flames. Amos and Copper continue their pursuit of the foxes as they climb up a cliff next to a waterfall.
As Amos follows and catches up with Copper at the waterfall and aims at the foxes, thinking they're in the bushes, a huge black grizzly bear suddenly looms up before him when he and Copper accidentally awaken him! Terrified, Amos fires his gun at the bear, but only hurts him when the bullet narrowly grazes the bear's shoulder. The enraged bear advances on Amos and attacks him, causing him to panic in horror and pant for breath while reloading his gun (and dropping some of his ammo), the frightened hunter manages just in time, but fails to shoot the angry bear again as the beast swipes at him, causing him to drop his gun and tumble down the cliff, losing his hat in the process. With the bear chasing him, Amos, while trying to escape the bear, fearfully backs away, and steps right into one of his own traps and is caught in it, injuring his leg and trapping his foot, while his gun is caught on a twig, slightly out of his reach. Copper fearlessly lunges at the huge bear in an effort to protect his master. While Copper fights the creature, Amos tries to free himself from the trap and crawls over to reach for his gun, both to no avail. Copper is soon overwhelmed when the bear gives him a powerful swipe and knocks the dog to the ground. Just as the bear prepares to finish off Copper, Tod, having heard Copper's yelp, leaps onto the bear's back and bites his ear, and lures him up the cliff, away from Copper and Amos, and toward the waterfall. Tod's fight with the bear eventually ends with the log snapping in half, sending both animals plummeting down the waterfall several meters below.
However, Amos eventually manages to free himself from the trap he was caught in, recovers his gun, and catches up with Copper and Tod, the latter who is immensely hurt and exhausted from fighting the bear. Taking advantage of this, Amos aims his gun at Tod, but Copper then stands over Tod, in front of the gun, looking pleadingly at his master. Amos orders Copper to move out of the way, but the hound refuses to let his friend die. Amos soon realizes that he and Copper would have been killed by the bear moments ago had Tod not intervened and that shooting the fox is just not worth it considering what his obsession led to. Thinking it over, Amos sort of appreciates Tod for saving his life, so he lowers his gun, decides that he and Copper should let the fox be, and leave for home. Due to having injured his ankle from the trap, Amos limps and struggles to walk for being saved from death, thanks to Tod and Copper's joint effort. Copper shares one last smile with Tod before leaving the preserve with Amos.
Back at home, Amos flinches and wails childishly as Widow Tweed doctors his injured ankle in defeat for stepping into his own deadly animal trap. Watching this, Chief remarks to Copper on how their master is "sure makin' a big fuss over a little ol' hurt leg."
===The Fox and the Hound 2===
Amos Slade appears in the midquel as a minor character. However, Amos is a comic relief character here, without the darker side as portrayed in the first film. Widow Tweed throws a pie in his face and threatens to do so again later. Chief appears but has very few speaking parts and very little screen time. Chief and Amos enter a hunting dog contest, where Chief takes another ribbon (fourth place) for the second time in a row which he seems to think makes him the champion hunting dog in the county. Amos mostly only shows up, in the beginning, trying to train Copper, becoming increasingly irate with his failures as a hunting dog, yelling at him after a chain of comedic events while chasing Tod (which were his own fault), looking for Copper later when the pup has gone to join the Singin' Strays and showing up later after being lead by Tod to the Singin' Strays' performance, where he reveals that Copper is not a stray at all and takes him home. After the Singin' Strays perform at the Grand Ole Opry thanks to Tod and Copper's help, Amos is enjoying some pie with Widow Tweed at her place until they are interrupted by a chase started by Tod, Copper, and Chief, which eventually leads to Widow Tweed attacking Amos countless times with a broom.
===Once Upon A Time: Red's Untold Tale===
Amos Slade doesn't appear on the show. However, he appears in the canonical novel Red's Untold Tale. In this version, he was specialized in the wolf hunt with his bloodhound Copper. He lived in the same village as Widow Lucas, her granddaughter Red and Peter. In his teenage past, Slade had a crush on Lucas and sometimes left flowers at her door. Amos was slain during a wolf attack.
===The Simpsons: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year===
Amos Slade was among the bad guys featured in the special. During the song, he attempted to hunt Bambi's mother, only to be foiled by a bop on the head from The Great Prince of the Forest's antlers.
==Gallery==
==Trivia==
*Amos' performance model was Art Stevens. He also bears a resemblance to his original voice actor Jack Albertson.
*Amos was animated by John Pomeroy and Ron Husband.
*Amos drives a 1923 Ford Model T. However, in the first movie, it is shown never to have a windshield but in the second one, it does. It was either a fix or a replacement.
*In the second movie, when not wearing his usual brown fur coat and blue pants, Amos is seen wearing a white shirt and pink underwear instead of the usual white underwear-like jammies he always wore in the first movie when not wearing his usual fur coat and pants.
*Amos Slade is the first main antagonist in a Disney Animated Canon film to be redeemed, the other three being John Silver, Denahi, and Te Kā.
*Amos' shotgun strongly resembles a Browning Auto-5 automatic 12-gauge shotgun. However, it is later shown to have a slide action like a pump-action shotgun. So it's possible Amos has both a semi-auto and a pump-action shotgun.
==External links==
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es:Amos Slade
fr:Amos Slade
nl:Ouwe Sepp
pt-br:Samuel Guerra
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