Is this a fox den?

[Fuddy1952]

We used to have lots of turkeys, quail, rabbits, etc. but rarely anymore. I set hunter cameras and know we have coyote. After getting horses we haven't seen coyote.
Near the creek I saw this hole dug about 10" across, large dead rabbit near entrance (stomach missing), a couple hours later apparently ate rest of rabbit.
Neighbor has chickens and one near our mailbox killed. I see turkey feathers near den.
We set a snare a couple days ago, this morning apparently got it by foot but it got loose (snare cable has a stop on it).
Any idea?

 

[Topzide]

I'd have to agree on a "dog" den. Looks like a fox den as I've seen ones exactly like that one and at the time only had foxes around. Now we have both. Put more snares or conabears around with cameras. Loosing small game is tell tell sign off both. Good luck!

 

[Bill Guenthner]

I think this is a problem that we have in America that we need to move past, foxes are struggling to compete with coyotes, which are invasive to Virginia, and the first sign of a fox and you want to kill it. I've seen one fox in the last 10 years. It's not like you're subsistence farming and foxes are a regular problem, no, they are so rare that you don't even know what a fox den looks like. "turkeys, quail, rabbits" can compete just fine with foxes, horses and people not so much.

 

[/pine]

The easiest way to find a fox's hole is...lift up its tail...!

 

[dodge man]

Unless you have a specific reason, I’d leave it alone also.

 

[Citydude]

We have foxes on our place. They are very good at rodent control so we are glad to have them around.

 

[bdhsfz6]

We have quite a few foxes on our land. I caught this guy with a game cam near the compost pile:

:

We like having them around to keep the rabbits & rodents out of the garden. Their presence doesn't seem to affect the turkey population in the area.

In some cases, they even play well with other small animals:

 

[California]

We seem to have plenty of foxes here. (north of SF). I put a cam under the house to see what the nightly party down there was all about. Let's see if this vid of the fox will upload. ... ... Um no, can't upload direct. Only can upload as a link to a URL on an approved video site such as YouTube.

But the real racket that wakes us up is the raccoons scraping the floor joists with their claws. Hunting bugs? Sounds like they will chew their way up through the floor, nightly, except I don't see damage under there. Identifying what was causing the racket, and seeing that they weren't really about to come up through the floor, justified the $35 Wyze camera purchase. Videos of skunk, fox, multiple raccoons at various times of the night, make an interesting show.

Edit - and the camera saw a calico cat wandering under there this afternoon. The same cat we usually see waiting at gopher holes in the orchard.

 

[jyoutz]

We had one of those on our land and thought it was a fox den, until one evening a badger came out of the hole.

 

[Bill Guenthner]

We had one of those on our land and thought it was a fox den, until one evening a badger came out of the hole.

Not likely a badger in Virginia. It's probably a coyote den.