Thursday 2 February 2012

Gloucester deer kill just the work of a scavenging fox! Shock horror!

 So, the deer found dead at Woodchester in Gloucestershire turned out to be the work of a hungry fox then - what a surprise. The Guardian newspaper article (read it HERE) stated the obvious, in that dog and fox had been at the deer, as the photo of the carcass suggests and DNA tests proved. Original suggestions made stated that a cat had suffocated the deer - cats sometimes suffocate their prey by placing their mouth over the muzzle of prey - but dogs also bite the face. The image here shows several sheep attacked by dogs, all with the same wounds around the face, even so, when a cat kills there can also be found puncture marks in the throat and the kill is extremely clean and then scavengers such as foxes and birds will do the rest. Sadly, with all the media exposure this story has created, there'll probably be a few sceptical folk come forward and say, "We told you there are no big cats....", even though hair samples in the past have proven otherwise and kills are relatively easy to find, as is scat. Mind you, if the DNA tests had been proven to belong to a cat, then what ? Another dramatic headline ? A feather in the cap of the believers ?

1 comment:

Robert Donnerty said...

It was a cover up - any fool townie with half a brain could see the deer were not killed by foxes. Even though they commissioned the tests, the National Trust got feet when the results came back and did not want to acknowledge the presence of leopards; which I hear tell is what the actual test results revealed.