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For a few years now I’ve had a golf course on my list of permissions to control rabbits and foxes, and generally the

rabbit numbers are kept pretty low for the size of the ground, although there is often a fox to be found somewhere around the fairways.

As I’d not been around the complex for a couple of months, the arrival of a thermal scope and thermal spotter for review from Scott Country prompted me to head over to have a look-see at what was around.

The spotter I had to test was a Pulsar Helion XQ38F and the scope a Trail XQ50, which Paul from Scott

Country had assured me would leave me impressed (a comment which usually unnerves me as it often leaves me equally skint soon after).

First things first, the scope needed to be zeroed. I decided that, as I would also be using this on the open hills for foxing, I’d attach it to my .260 Rem which is fitted with a Picatinny rail, meaning I could mount it straight on and remove it again with no loss of zero with my day scope, and the larger calibre would be better suited on the windy slopes.

I soon found that zeroing a thermal scope isn’t quite the same as zeroing a day scope. Keeping in mind that its

A different bAll gAmeForget ‘birdies’, it’s fox that Mark Ripley is after on his golf course permissions, and the thermal gear he’s testing out proves to be a different affair to the lamps of old

foxing with mark ripley foxing with mark ripley

image is generated by heat alone, it’s not just a case of sticking a target to a board and off you go. A quick look on YouTube showed several methods, from handwarmers to heating a washer with a blowtorch to generate a heat source to aim at.

The handwarmer option seemed good, although it makes for a fairly large target, so I chose a different idea recommended by a friend with the same thermal scope using a smaller target – boiled eggs!

As these hold their heat well, I simply boiled a few eggs and dropped them into a flask of boiling water to keep them warm until I reached the

Pict

ures

: Mar

k ri

pley

below: Using the Flextone FlX50 predator caller

where we had last seen the fox, and not more than 50 yards from the clubhouse we spotted it wandering towards the end of the fence to our left, some 80 yards out.

The fox would soon be out of sight, so if we were going to get this one it would need to be a quick shot from here. There was little point in trying to squeak it in over the party music, so I got down on the bipod and lined up on the fox. We could hear people talking on the balcony behind as I squeezed the trigger and unleashed a 143gr night spoiler on its way.

A solid thump and a flattened fox in the scope proved the scope’s worth. The sound of the shot, despite being so close to the clubhouse, didn’t even cause a pause in a conversation that we could hear, and went unnoticed or was mistaken for a firework, also proving the worth of the MAE moderator from JMS Arms.

With our early success, we headed discreetly away from the party area, retrieving a good-sized dog fox along the way, and headed to the far side of the course.

There’s a good spot here where you can call foxes in from woods either side while sat on a bank overlooking

the whole area. We also had one of the Flextone FLX50 predator

callers on test from Scott Country, which had already proved irresistible to a good number of now deceased foxes, so we decided to put this out in between the two patches of woodland and sit and wait.

We had only had the caller playing its tunes for a

minute or so before a fox appeared from our left coming in towards it, stopping every few yards to cock its head inquisitively towards the caller. Completely distracted by the caller and with no lamp or IR to give us away, I lined up on the fox and added a vixen to the bag.

farm to zero the rifle.As Paul had said, the scope was

indeed an impressive bit of kit, and with only four or five shots I had a smashed egg and a scope zeroed for 100 yards – time to put this thermal gadgetry to the test on the fairways.

As always, my shooting mate Gary was keen as ever to see the latest technology I had to play with, and he is always up for a bit of foxing. So, he came along too, armed with his .22 rimfire to pot any rabbits that were likely to be about.

When we arrived at the golf complex we found that the function room above with balconies overlooking the course was being used for an evening wedding reception. This would normally put a stop to shooting with a lamp until it had finished, but as we were using the thermal we slipped from the darkened car park out onto the green unseen. Being close to firework night, there was a large display going off within earshot, so we figured that any shots we took with a moderated rifle were likely to be mistaken for fireworks.

We hadn’t walked more than 200 yards when the Pulsar spotter clearly picked up a fox on the driving range directly in front of the clubhouse and the busy function room. The edge of the driving range was netted so we would have to walk right below the wedding party and its tipsy revellers to get a safe shot down the driving range on the other side of the fence.

With both of us using thermal spotters we stealthily found our way around the fence and out onto the green. We made our way towards

foxing with mark ripley foxing with mark ripley

HOW DOeS iT WOrk?

Thermal spotters use a lens to focus heat waves onto a

processor to create an image. The hotter the object, the brighter

it appears – and as it doesn’t use an infrared light,

the stalker is invisible to the quarry.

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»

“a fox appeared, stopping every few yards to cock its head inquisitively towards the caller’s tunes”

below: It didn’t take long to zero the thermal on the .260 Rem rifle

above: The Pulsar thermal’s image was clearly identifiable

18 www.rifleshootermagazine.co.uk

We left the caller going and continued to wait. Sure enough, from the right this time, a fox came steaming in unnoticed by me until a tap on the shoulder and a nod in the right direction from Gary sealed its fate, and another dog fox lay in the grass 80 yards away.

We let the caller cry out its temptations a while longer, before collecting up the victims and moving on to another hot spot on the course.

Here, we bumped into a fox hunting

out on the open green on the edge of another patch of woodland. This one was only 50 or 60 yards away, but with a house and a road behind it we didn’t have a shot unless we could get it to come closer. I leant the rifle against the side of a tree and Gary mouth squeaked it in to less than 20 yards. I struggled to get onto it as it trotted round to our right, and I squeezed the trigger a little sooner than I intended and put the round into the ground to the left of the fox!

Cursing myself for completely fluffing the easiest shot of the evening, I was quickly rewarded with a snap shot at about 60 yards when a fox came running in again to one of Gary’s mouth squeaks and spotted us at the last minute before bolting, only to stop for the last look back just before the sanctuary of the woodland cover.

Continuing on our walk, picking off the odd rabbit here and there, we came across a pair of foxes on the edge of another patch of cover.

As I got into position, one fox wandered into cover while the other sat looking towards us at around 100 yards away. It was quickly added to the growing tally.

With woodland all around us and foxes everywhere we again put out the caller, and again within minutes we had two foxes coming in. Only one of these was a safe shot with the other skylined to our left.

This fox trotted out towards the caller but was also quite intrigued by something behind it, continually looking back. As if torn between which way to go it sat back, as if to think about it, which was the time I suggested another direction of travel it clearly hadn’t considered – down. So, with six foxes on the ground and fine rain setting in, we decided to call it a night.

Foxing using thermal may seem extravagant, unsporting or even unfair by some, but one thing that is for certain is that it’s an extremely

effective form of pest control. It also has an advantage over lamp or night vision by not only being completely covert, but presenting no issue with glare back from foliage or grass which can sometimes make a shot impossible using lamp or infrared.

The downsides? It’s difficult to see any small twigs etc that can partially obscure a shot, and at longer ranges, identification can be a problem.

That said, within sensible ranges this isn’t an issue, and under the cover of darkness it shouldn’t be a problem to close in on even the wariest of foxes. Whether you use thermal to shoot with or simply as a spotter, there’s no denying that thermal equipment is a game-changing step for any serious foxer.

foxing with mark ripley foxing with mark ripley

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“foxing using thermal may seem extravagant or unsporting but it’s extremely effective”

above: The pair are careful not to be seen or heard by the nearby wedding party

RIghT: The haul of six foxes was a good

evening’s work

leFT: The first fox is taken down within just a few minutes

foxing with mark ripley foxing with mark ripley

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