On holiday in the Lake District this year I was talking to one of the locals who kept a small number of chickens. The week before he had lost all of them to a fox. This was his own fault he said, as he had forgotten to secure the shed where he kept his chickens overnight. He told me that in winter he goes out some nights to shoot foxes that are close to the village. That seemed fair enough to me. I don't hold with fox hunting though. Control by shooting is one thing, a 'sport' where a wild animal is persued for fun is quite another.
I am fairly sure that the guy told me that he just left the corpses of the chickens that the fox had killed. I believe he said that a fox will kill all the chickens (not just one to eat) and return for them another night. Is this true? Or was he just having me on?