I know we’ve been talking about this here for over ten years, probably 20.
Iowas greys are all but gone. I’ve actually been seeing a few more run over around my area.
In my dumb hillbilly reasoning I think the coon population is correlated with gray fox decline SOMEHOW.
Well I pretty sure distemper and coon starin of rabies has been floated as a reason.
Possible I guess; Back years ago, my Wife and I spent part of our Honey moon at Lake Cumberland State Resort . Behind the dining room is an observation deck that looks out over the main Part of the Lake. There used to be a ton of coons that would come up there and beg for food. People would feed them scraps, and some of them were huge! I noticed right away that the gray foxes that came up there wanted no part of the coons; and the coons didn’t tolerate the foxes in their space either!
I was talking to a guy about coyotes catching his chickens and he said he had a picture of it looking at him. He pulled it up and it was a perfect picture of a grey fox. It’s hard to explain to people that weren’t around just how thick grey’s used to be in Kentucky. The floor at fur sales would be covered in them. I have several pics of three or four greys in a days catch pic.
I miss those days! It was common back then to catch grays, and the guys that called them in with an old 8 track gray fox pup in distress tape would often have one or two looking at you within about 2 minutes from the time you turned on the player! I know a couple of guys that got 15 in one night as I recall ! Considering the ease of calling them in, as well as each one paying the same or better than a days wages at a full time job, you can see how those were " Shining Times" so to speak!