Ten foxes and a .17 HMR

Your gun safe may hold one gun or several, but for most keen hunters there is always one or two that stand out compared to the others. One or two that when you reach for them, good things are more likely to happen. You’ve used them so much for a particular style of hunting that you’ve become confident in them, more than the others, that tend to feel foreign to you. Your old favourite. It just feels like it’s a part of you. For me, one of those guns is the CZ .17HMR for fox whistling.

However, this doesn’t seem to be the case for many, who find the .17HMR unsuitable for fox shooting. Unsuitable because they haven’t had the results from the .17HMR that they expected. I’ve heard this several times. An old friend of mine put it best. “When a fox is facing you, the chest can be divided into thirds and two of those thirds are shoulders, with the remainder being the central core of the chest.”

In my .17 HMR I’m only using 17gr hollow-points and on occasions 20gr. That’s a small projectile. If you limit your fox shooting to mostly within 50yds, with the odd shot out to 80yds, there’s few problems… if you can shoot accurately with your rifle. The other obvious choice is to take only head shots, which are quiet emphatic, but I personally prefer the stillness and predictability of the chest compared to the likelihood of erratic head movement.              

There is however one other thing I’ve found with my .17 HMR regarding killing power on foxes, and that is to use hollow-point projectiles. I’ve tried other options, with okay results, but hollow-points have proved the best time and time again. I used a 5-shot magazine for many years but bought a 10-shot magazine more recently as it just makes sense to spend less time reloading a magazine when there could be a fox about.

Fox season sees me sitting out in the hills during summer to watch foxes on the run. February means padded tracks in the sand and the heavy odour of fox that is infused with the scent of the land. I’m often counting down the days.

A couple of properties on a morning outing provided four foxes before lunchtime and I thought I was in for a good day. The only downside being the need to drag the rather heavy foxes all the way back to the vehicle parked up on the hill, along with my hunting gear.

One of the morning foxes had been spotted on the side of a gully, giving me time to set up to call him in. As soon as I blew the whistle, he lifted his head and bolted down the hill toward me. Settling in behind the rifle I followed his fast and weaving path down the hill between patches of blackberry and briar.

I tried squeaking with my lips and then reverted to louder noises, but he wasn’t stopping or slowing for anyone. If I didn’t shoot soon, he’d be a blur in the riflescope and bolting away into the distance. So, I kept the cross-hairs steady on the core of his bounding form and fired.

Thwack! He crumpled at the shot and slid on his back a metre or two down the gully with his white and grey belly hair upward and legs flaying gently in the air. Man, I was glad I didn’t stuff that up! Then, opening the bolt, ejecting the tiny brass case, a wisp of gun smoke rose upward into the air like a genie released from a bottle. I love that smell!

Onward to the next few properties I went with high hopes. I called from stand to stand and property to property and to my amazement didn’t see a fox. I couldn’t believe it! Arriving at another location with a rather deflated spirit I set up in the best place I could, with an imperfect crosswind but I would be calling out into a good stand of cumbungi reeds. My predator call had barely started to squawk down into that tangle of reeds and swamp before raising the ears and heads of foxes, as two came tearing out of the cumbungi reeds.

The first fox appeared over the bank and began to slowly wander along sniffing the ground. She paused when confronted with an interesting scent and crumpled soon after as the rifle cracked, and bullet thwacked. Quickly reloading, I searched for the second fox and was greeted by nothing but the greens and browns of the countryside.

Then, to my amazement, the other fox appeared out of the gully to cautiously follow the scent trail left by that of the first. It propped to raise its head, peering up with a questioning gaze at the first fox laying still on the ground. Another quick crack and thwack and two were down. Not expecting anything else and rather surprised by the behaviour of the last fox, I casually reloaded the rifle and put the predator caller back to work with low expectations. Then, another one, just like the others – thwack! Three foxes in 15 minutes and I was loving life.

Of course, the suicidal fox supply had expired, and this property needed to be retired for the day. I managed another two from other places in a rather common and predictable fox whistling manner and headed to the final property with nine foxes in the back.

The late afternoon sun was painting the land with its orangey tinge as I set my shooting sticks up on a raised mound of dirt overlooking an expanse of open grassy paddocks. It stretched down past a dam and into a deep gully with plenty of cover for foxes to hide. Unfortunately, it was about 500m from my position so I would need the volume of the predator call to reach into the distance.

I had that predator caller screeching its lungs out in tortured desperation. I called and paused, called and paused… and just about rang the neck of that predator caller but nothing came. Nothing! That was my last hope, my last chance and it was gone. Oh well, I had done my best.

As the predator caller was being placed back into my daypack with disappointment and the rifle unloaded, I heard a sound, a sound that meant trouble but to me filled my soul with hope. From way down the hill below where the dam pooled in the open paddock came the concerned calls of wood ducks. The sound they make when a predator is near, and that he was.

Out in the open paddock stood the form of a fox frozen with caution. He was still about 300yds out, giving me the time to reload and unpack to get ready. But boy, was he cautious. I’ve called from this position and shot foxes coming from there before and he seemed educated.

With the predator caller again singing a tempting tune, he continued on causing the wood ducks to flutter and run into a tight group as the form of a fox trotted and paused, trotted and paused… his way onward toward me. Then, he sat down and wouldn’t move. It was getting late, the light less, and he wouldn’t budge.

I had to try something else. So now that he was about 150yds out into the neighbouring property I reached for the only other caller I had. The humble button whistle, and I squealed my best.

Yep, that did it, onward and inward he came. Every time he stopped to hesitate, I squealed some more, and he was tempted a little closer. Slipping through the wires of the boundary fence he came up in an arc with nose held high trying to circle downwind to check the breeze. At 80yds he was in the shade from the setting sun and sat down with curiosity written on his face as I lay prone over the bipod and settled the cross-hairs on his chest. The rifle cracked into the late afternoon and reached out with a delayed bullet strike and solid hit. He crumpled into a lifeless pile with that pleasing thud drifting on the late afternoon breeze.

He was a large dog fox and bigger in body than the others from earlier in the day. He made me earn him that was for sure.

I placed my foxes out in a row for a photo in the late afternoon glow. It was another reminder to me that if you put the .17 HMR in the right spot, it’ll drop the lot!