Swamp Fox Calls - All
A hunter with his hunting fox. Canada, 1942.
There is no historical evidence that foxes were used as hunting companions in Canada during the 1940s—or at any time in Canadian history. Unlike dogs, falcons, or even horses, foxes were not domesticated or trained for cooperative hunting in North America, including by Indigenous peoples or European settlers.
Foxes in Canada were primarily associated with the fur trade, not hunting partnerships. The country had a well-established fur industry, and fox farming—especially for silver, red, and Arctic foxes—was a significant rural enterprise, particularly in the Canadian Maritimes, the Prairies, and the North. Fur farms proliferated in the early 20th century, peaking in the 1920s–1940s, when luxurious fox fur coats were in high demand in Europe and the United States.
Wild foxes were trapped for their pelts, often using steel leg-hold traps or snares. Trappers—many of them Indigenous or Métis, or non-Indigenous residents of remote regions—relied on trapping as a seasonal source of income. Foxes were valued not for their behavior or trainability, but for the quality of their fur.
Why Foxes Were Not Used as Hunting Companions
Foxes, despite being intelligent and agile predators, are solitary, secretive, and highly independent animals. Unlike wolves (from which dogs are descended), foxes have not undergone the thousands of years of domestication necessary to make them reliable working partners. Even in captivity, foxes retain strong wild instincts and are difficult to train for specific tasks.
Attempts to domesticate foxes on a large scale only began decades later, most notably in the Soviet Union in the 1950s with Dmitry Belyaev’s famous experiment breeding tame silver foxes. But even those results did not produce animals suitable for hunting work.
In Canada, the animals used in hunting were almost exclusively dogs—such as hounds for tracking, retrievers for waterfowl, and hardy northern breeds like the Canadian Eskimo Dog or Husky for sledding and assisting in polar hunts. Birds of prey were not commonly used in Canadian hunting traditions, unlike in Central Asia or the Middle East.
Folklore and Misconceptions
While foxes were not hunting companions, they did occupy a prominent place in Indigenous oral traditions across Canada. In many First Nations stories, the fox appears as a clever trickster—intelligent, resourceful, and elusive—often outwitting larger animals or humans. These tales reflected deep observation of animal behavior but did not imply that foxes could be tamed or used in hunting.
In popular culture of the 1940s, foxes were sometimes romanticized in literature and early wildlife documentaries, but always as wild, solitary creatures—never as partners to humans in the field.
Conclusion
In Canada, foxes were valuable for their fur, not their companionship. They were trapped, farmed, and admired from a distance, but never trained or used as hunting assistants. The idea of using a fox as a hunting companion remains a myth or a product of imaginative fiction rather than historical reality. Canadian hunting traditions relied on domesticated animals—especially dogs—and the deep ecological knowledge of Indigenous and settler trappers, not on wild canids like the fox.
Can a fox hunt a squirrel?
Yes, foxes can and do hunt squirrels as part of their natural behavior. Foxes are carnivorous predators, and squirrels can be a part of their diet, especially if they are available in the fox's habitat. However, hunting squirrels can be challenging for foxes because squirrels are agile and quick, both on the ground and in trees.
Foxes typically rely on stealth, speed, and surprise to catch prey like squirrels. They may stalk or ambush them, using their keen senses to detect movement and sound. While squirrels are not a fox's primary prey (they often prefer smaller mammals like rodents), they will take the opportunity to hunt squirrels if the situation allows.
In urban or suburban areas where foxes and squirrels coexist, this predator-prey relationship can still occur, though it might be less common due to human interference and other food sources available to foxes.
