01 May 2013, 06:40
Matt GrahamFox Lured
Fox lured to gun by a rabbit screaming by: Alicia Wood From: The Daily Telegraph April 29, 2013 12:00AM
http://www.dailytelegraph.com....frezz0-1226631156244
Shooters and Fishers Party MP Robert Borsak. THE whistle mimics the sound of a rabbit dying. For foxes, it means dinner.
Shooters and Fishers Party MP Robert Borsak and his friend Ron Kiehne are quietly stepping through bushland in Glen Innes and Deepwater.
Dressed in camouflage, each has a gun slung over a shoulder, and are careful to keep silent as they approach.
"When I start whistling, don't wave your arms about, stay still, don't move," cautions Kiehne.
Borsak is carrying a Beretta shotgun, Kiehne, a Ruger rifle.
Kiehne leans against a tree and blows a "Silva" fox whistle which starts softly, indistinct from some of the birds calling in the trees
above. As it gets louder, it sounds like screaming.
At first, there is nothing, and a few locations are walked through with no shots fired. Then, at a distance of more than 100m, there is a rustle, and a small fox bounds down a hill. In a matter of seconds, Kiehne cocks his rifle and shoots it through the heart.
I'd never seen a shot animal before. But after a climb through the scrub, there it is.
Eyes open, a single shot to the heart, and blood stuck to its fur.
With foxes, these hunters say you have to aim for the chest. "A chest shot is a humane kill," Borsak explains.
There's an old saying a fox will steal the milk out of your tea but on these farms they eat everything they can find: lambs, chickens, lizards, eggs.
"We're the only predators they've got," Borsak says.
"When they come up close and look straight at you, you think, what a beautiful creature. Then bang."
Borsak started hunting as a teenager, and took his twin boys hunting at six. They are 29 next year. "People understand families going fishing. But they seem to think that hunting is not a family-oriented thing. Well it is."