Reynard the Invincible 
Some Impromptu Adventures with the Red Foxes 
T is yrecog- 
| ‘nize, I_ be- 
lieve, today, 
by the foremost 
educators that 
it was FOREST 
AND _ STREAM’S 
old correspond- 
ent, Rowland E. 
Robinson who 
saved the real 
vernacular of 
rural New Eng- 
land from to- 
tal annihilation 
through the me- 
dium of his 
“Danvis Folks,” 
“Uncle Lisha’s 
Shop,” “Sam 
Lovel’s Camps” 
and other 
charming 
sketches pub- 
lished in these 
columns a quar- 
ter of a century 
ago. Through all 
his work he carries a vein of outdoor 
life, shooting, fishing and the like, chief 
of which is fox hunting. 
But the type of old-fashioned fox 
hunter idealized in Sam Lovel has 
passed away and very few sportsmen 
of to-day think of pursuing Bre’r Fox, 
either for pleasure or profit. 
It is said that the fox is the only 
predatory animal that has held his own 
against the march of civilization and 
still exists in material numbers in the 
highest cultivated regions. His ability 
to fend himself seems implanted in his 
crafty little heart, and no terrain be it 
worked with Hollandic thoroughness 
daunts him and he can always find a 
refuge from which he can sally forth 
at night and glean easy pickings 
“From the farmer’s barn by the way.” 
ERE the numbers of hunters who 
go forth to hunt questioned in the 
premises, I am quite sure that not one 
in a hundred could truly testify, that 
in his excursions during the open sea- 
son he had ever seen a red fox, a ma- 
jority would say that their aspirations 
never got beyond squirrels, woodchucks, 
rabbits, ruffed grouse, wild ducks and 
Mongolian pheasants, they never even 
considered the possibility of seeing a 
84 ° 
of the Genesee Valley 
By H. S. De LONG 

Good timber, a quartet of foxhound puppies 
fox, much less of shooting one, and yet 
all through the eastern states in every 
country and township there are many 
of them left. 
H® is a wary little chap, this rear 
guard of the teeming wild things 
that our great grandfathers knew when 
they tackled this broad wilderness with 
axe and rifle—he won’t wait for the 
cautious squirrel hunter moving quietly 
through the October woods with his 
eyes carefully scanning the tops of the 
hickories and chestnuts, to catch a 
glimpse of his glorious brush when in- 
terrupted in his morning quest of field 
mice; no indeed, long before the sports- 
man comes in sight his keen nose warns 
him and he fades away into the thicket 
like a shadow. 
Primarily nocturnal, the fox extends 
his working hours well into the fore- 
noon, rests during the middle of the 
day, picking up his activities again 
near sundown. He has a queer trait of 
taking his mid-day siesta in the open 
stretched along the top rail of a worm 
fence; coiled on the sunny surface of 
a flat topped stump or warm smooth 
boulder. It is said he sleeps with one 
eye open and one can well believe it, 
for so attuned are his sensitive nerves 
to the fact that 
danger lurks ev- 
erywhere and a 
tragic end 
awaits him, that 
to glimpse his 
form at one of 
those daylight 
relaxations can 
only be credited 
to pure acci- 
dent. My only 
experience 
along this line 
leads me after 
yiea res oe 
thought to pre- 
sume that a spe- 
cially) ‘extra 
banquet the 
night before had 
made his sleep 
deeper than 
usual. At any 
rate, I saw him 
fad rw wae 
squirrel shoot- 
ing one bright 
September day in Cousin George’s wood 
lot over in Ontario County. This wood 
lot covering forty-five acres of original 
forest was blocked out by George’s 
great-grandfather when he took out his 
grant for the home farm from the land 
office in Canandaigua in 1795. His 
idea was to preserve this tract intact 
for his and future generations; and his 
wishes have been carried out. Only 
fully matured trees and those showing 
signs of deterioration have been taken 
out, and while there has always been 
plenty of building timber used and 
thousands of cords of stove-wood cut, 
the forest gives no sign of depletion 
but stands to-day a beautiful sylvan 
monument to the old pioneer’s wisdom. 
Advancing coal prices worry Cousin 
George not at all and being a bachelor, 
he makes his trees children and I really 
believe he knows them every one; I am 
sure he loves them and when at times 
some eager bee hunter fells one of his 
favorites for a pail full of dirty honey, 
he grieves as over the loss of some fa- 
vorite animal and sadly cuts up the 
remains into stove length. 
TEALING aleng the bottom of a 
shallow gully where a tiny stream 
so moistened the grasses along its 




