Quarry

The Valley of Virginia provides habitat for gray fox, red fox and coyotes. Gray foxes made the Valley their home thousands of years ago and are a different genus from red foxes. Gray foxes tend to live in forested areas and can climb trees unlike most of their canid cousins. A huntsman can usually tell when the hounds chase a gray fox as the gray fox will typically run in large circles through their territory. We have seen fewer and fewer gray foxes in this area and the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources established a Virginia Gray Fox Project to study the gray fox and the reason for their decline in Virginia.

Red foxes prefer open or mixed landscapes and are particularly fond of patrolling the large cornfields here in the Valley as this is where field mice and other critters live. Any member can relate tales of sitting on their horse on a hot, humid early fall day and listening to the hounds as they chase a fox around a corn field. Virginia’s landscape offers many opportunities for a fox to dive into a hole to escape the pack.

Coyotes drifted into Virginia relatively recently having an original habitat in the southwest. Coyotes look like a medium sized dog and can be gray or reddish in color.. Also, coyotes tend to set off in a straight line and head for the hills, usually running out of territory far ahead of the pack.