Fox lure hunting: Fox luring or fox lure hunting is probably the right choice of words. Many hunters also understand fox lure hunting to mean sitting on a lure. The word "tease" alone has fascinated me since I was a young hunter. The clever fox; if I want to tease it, I have to be cleverer than it.
I had such a great experience at the age of 16. Our professional hunter told me that he had seen a track in the snow in a reedbed near a village, almost as big as that of a sheepdog. He had already been working with the hare lure during the night, but without success. Prove your skill, he said.
Lure hunt for the fox: my first fox lure hunt
During the day, I looked for a suitable stalking opportunity in the reed beds. I had to take the constant easterly wind into account. My reasoning at the time: if it really is that big, then it is old and if it has grown old, then it is particularly clever. So I had to be smarter.
In the late afternoon, I took a friend with me. When I arrived at the right place, he was supposed to go back to the village so that the smart guy could locate the distant footsteps in the hardened snow.
After an hour, already frozen through, I started teasing. The fox already knew the hare call from the professional hunter. But I had a rubber duck decoy hanging around my neck. I touched it lightly with my hand so that a very soft chattering of contented ducks could be heard. After three minutes, a few reeds wiggled in front of me. On suspicion, I raised the shotgun into shooting position and a fox was already in front of me. He was just about to flee when my shotgun shell caught him.
This fox was really big and my strongest so far: 14 kg and 163 cm from the muzzle to the tip of the shotgun.
Fox hunting was always the most exciting hunt for me. Whether with a hare call, mouse whistle, fox barker, fox flute or the later developed bird call.
Three valuable tips for fox baiting
Don't tempt at the wrong time of year: In the main mating season from Christmas to the third decade of January, the fox has one thing in particular in focus: it wants to produce offspring. So you shouldn't be disappointed if no fox comes to lodge a complaint.
Pay attention to the right time of day: Foxes react more often in the evening than in the morning. This is because their stomachs are already full in the morning.
An insider tip for the right place: Lament briefly in the late afternoon near a road and the fox already associates "car noise -> hare injured".
The history of decoy hunting for foxes
My fox barker and the fox flute were developed based on ancient written records. The development was so exciting for me because hunters didn't have as many technical aids as we do today. Their rifles had a shorter range than today. So they had to be inventive to lure the game as close as possible.
What's more, a mature fox bellow brought in so much money that a hunter could feed his family for a month with the proceeds. When Bavarian television filmed a programme with me about 400 years of lure hunting history, we had access to rarities of game lures from the 16th century onwards. It's unbelievable what people came up with back then to hunt with decoys.
