DKO. 1, 1894.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
468 
FLORIDA FOXES CLIMB PINES. 
The query "Do foxes climb trees?" has been asked 
ma.ny times, and as often answered in the positive. Still 
there are some people who are incredulous. The reason 
is that in their part of the country (and they've probably 
never hunted anywhere else) foxes prefer to go to ground 
or take refuge in rocks when hard pressed rather than 
roost in trees. In my opinion, there is one good reason 
why they don't climb trees in the North or in the central 
States, and that is because they can't do it. In those parts 
referred to the fox travels over a great deal of ground, in 
many places rocky and mountainous. He also does a cer- 
tain amount of digging on his own account when he wants 
ground moles, young rabbits under a tree stump, etc. All 
this work and this walking kepp his claws comparatively 
well worn down ; hence the difficulty of climbing a straight 
tree, even when it could be grasped. Another thing, too; 
when a fox can get into a good hole or among rocks, he is 
pretty well safe from hounds or hunters. In a tree he'd 
bp an easy mark for even a boy with a rock. 
In the Florida peninsula it's different altogether. The 
that raises a hunter's spirits only to dash them down 
again. 
Last winter I spent a few weeks in the vicinity of Fort 
Meade with my brother, who has lived there some seven 
years. He knows every inch of the country for miles 
around, is as keen on any kind of sport as I am. and has 
a few hounds that hunt anything except rabbits and 
gophers. It was during my stay with him that I was 
first introduced to a fox up a tree. "We hunted and" 
killed foxes by moonlight, starlight, at daybreak, and 
once killed one in the middle of the day. We never 
came home empty-handed, Fred's hounds were too good 
for that; once a trail was struck it was dollars to dough- 
nuts the fox would be jumped; once jumped, it was tree 
or hole. Possibly they lose a fox sometimes; they never 
did when I was out. His pack consisted of but four, old 
Smiler, Spring, Harlequin and Solomon, the last a great 
dog but headstrong as old Harry. When I knew Smiler 
he had seen his best days after foxes; he was getting old 
and the younger hounds would run away from him in a 
long chase. This didn't please the old dog; when he 
wanted to rest he'd stop and bay up a tree; as a rule the 
other hounds would believe him and would fly to him 
and assist in raising a disturbance at the foot of a pine 
that no fox could climb. When my brother would get 
to them it would be a case of "hark forward," with a 
a burst of about forty-five minutes, with Fred's hounds 
driving a gray fox before them and making euch music 
as, taking all the surroundings into consideration, I'd 
never heard before. There were only five of us out, Fred 
and myself and the three Durrance boys. Joe, Harney and 
Jim. To a Northerner it would have been a weird sight 
to see us sweeping over the long grass, threading our way 
at a gallop between the boles of pine trees. As soon as we 
heard the hounds tree their fox we sobered down to a jog. 
In a couple of minutes we were with them. The four 
hounds were baying at the foot of a small pine; 25ft. up 
that pine was the fox, plainly visible in the bright moon- 
light. Joe Durrance dismounted, picked up a pine knot, 
"chunked" him out and all was over. 
Were we more unsportsmanlike than the fox hunters 
of Kentucky who hunt the red fox, which doesn't climb 
trees but holes up when hard pressed and the opportunity 
occurs? Our hounds had earned him and he had been 
fairly treed after trying all the tricks he knew. Men 
who ride after hounds because they have open country 
and can do so, are apt to look down on a man who, in a 
mountainous, unridable country, shoots a fox before a 
hound whicb has probably stuck to the trail over the 
most difficult kind of ground, puzzling out the scent on 
bare spots, finally driving his fox over the runway where 
his owner is stationed. In this case there is none of the 
THE KING OF THE GLEN. 
Photo from life by A. G. Wallihan. 
Florida gray fox has the agility and capabilities of any 
old tomcat. Give him a young pine of 8 or lOin. in 
diameter, and the fact that there's not a branch on it for 
30ft. or more won't bother him a particle if the hounds are 
pressing him. He just "trees" and calmly waits to be 
"chunked" out of the pine; lightwood knots, judging 
from the way Joe Durrance, of Fort Meade, Florida, can 
throw them, are all that are necessary in the way of 
missiles. There are two reasons why f pxes tree in Florida 
in preference to going under ground. One reason I think 
is because they have abnormally long claws which are 
due to the nature of the soil, which is sandy, and to the 
fact that they have to do very little, if any, digging to 
get their suppers. In the next place, water is so near the 
surface that it is almost impossible to go any depth with- 
out finding moisture, hence what holes any animals may 
dig are generally comparatively shallow and therefore 
unsafe. So that the only avenues of escape for a hard 
pressed fox are to hole up in a spot from which a good 
mattock can nearly always dislodge him with only a 
small outlay of manual labor; or to climb a tree where he 
believes he will be safer; the hounds can't scratch him out 
anyway. When a fox wants to goto ground he chooses a 
good-sized gopher hole. Be it known that Florida 
"gophers" are not the gophers of the West; neither do 
they bear any resemblance to those animals. A gopher 
in Florida is a common tortoise; there are plenty of them 
too, and for some reason best known to themselves. 
Betters and pointers will make game on them in a wav 
sound rating thrown in. The delay would cause slow 
running for a while, but on every occasion that I was out 
the result was entirely satisfactory. We killed six foxes 
altogether, four of them "treed," one went to ground in 
a gopher hole near a cracker's house and was soon (we 
were told) dug out by the cracker and his son, the sixth 
was run into by the hounds on a road during the hunt by 
starlight, and was not found till next morning, the 
hounds having left the fox after killing it and refusing 
to show us where it was. As a matter of fact we were 
actually within a short distance of it at one time. The 
dim light of the stars in a great measure prevents any- 
thing like riding to hounds through the pine lands; it's a 
case of knowing the country and "nicking in" on such 
occasions. That night Solomon preferred to run a fox by 
himself to' joining his three companions; this bothered us 
a little at the start, as we scarcely knew what to make of 
it. Smiler, Spring and Harlequin killed theirs after a 
long run, leaving him as above stated. Solomon pushed 
his fox so hard that it had to hole up, meeting its death 
at the hands of the aforementioned cracker and his son. 
A dash of forty minutes through the pine forests after a 
flying pack on a moonlight night is the most exhilarating 
thing I know. It sounds like reckless work and probably 
is, but with a good horse under me, I'd sooner do it than 
eat. Fallen trees, gopher 'holes and palmetto roots, all 
have to be looked out for; the gopher holes being particu- 
larly dangerous for a horse to put his foot in. On the 
night of Dec. 23, 1893, after a long trail, we had just such 
excitement attendant on riding to hounds to buoy the 
hunter up. Often chilled to the bone, he has stood for 
hours, always on the alert, straining his ear to catch the 
distant sound that tells him the fox is at last coming his 
way. Is that man no sportsman? Charles Eeade once 
wrote a book entitled "Put Yourself in His Place." Do 
you see the point? 
To return to hunting the fox in Florida. The last day of 
my stay had come and I wanted to see a chase by day- 
light. Getting up at daybreak, horses were fed, break- 
fast eaten, and we were ready to start about half an hour 
before sun-up. It was chilly, in fact cold, at that hour of 
the morning. To keep warm it was necessary to button 
one's coat up, a new experience to me in Florida, the 
thermometer having fluctuated between 70 and 90 during 
my stay; that is, during the daytime. 
The first thing we struck was a cold trail of what turned 
out to be a marauding wildcat. For a long time it was 
slow work, but the work done by the hounds was well 
worth watching. First, Smiler would have it; and then, 
just as we thought they'd got well under way, the trail 
failed. Solomon's stern soon showed that he had a touch 
of it some 50yds. ahead; a cry from him and the other 
three would fly to him; a moment's delay while each one 
showed the other where the cat hart Deen, ana away 
they'd go, only to have the same thing re-enacted over 
and over again with variations. The cat had been evi- 
dently on the hunt and had turned aside nere and there 
in search of her prey. 
