Attribution: Photo by Amanda Frank on Unsplash
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper recognizes this time of year as the season of the great fox hunts when he and country cousins and comrades in northwest Wisconsin spent Saturday afternoons slogging through deep midwinter snow as they followed the track of a fox that was truthfully never in serious jeopardy.
Occasionally the pursued animal would be briefly spotted on the crest of a faraway hill, too far away to tell if it was laughing but close enough to inject new intensity into the chase.
A teenaged farm boy in those distant old days would have to be lumped into the classification of predator—armed with a .22 caliber rifle and anxious to shoot all manner of birds and critters.
Now in the no-kill stage of outdoor pursuits, the keeper shakes his head at what once was way back then.
The record will show that he and his fellow fox pursuers never harmed a fox in any way, other than to force it into Saturday afternoon exercise.
The keeper is happy with that.Â
Photo by Bill Stokes