I arrived at the farm early; it would be another hour and a half before dusk but I wanted to get set up on the bank in the middle of the bowl at the end of the valley, where I knew I’d have a good view of the surrounding banks and field edges. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon – a welcome reprieve from what seemed like weeks of wet and windy weather – yet the temperature was little more than a couple of degrees above freezing.
Shouldering the rifle in its drag bag, I ambled back down the track to a gateway which gave a good vista from the bank down into the bowl below. Through habit, I walked quietly up to the gate to see if there was anything on the bank or in the bowl. Almost instantly I spotted the ginger back and tail of a fox slinking off the bank and towards the wood that covers the majority of the bank on this side. It had either been laid in the sun on the bank below or had been pushed from cover by the farmer and one of the farm lads shooting pigeons at the other end of the wood.