After successful fundraising efforts from a dedicated group of local hunters, the NH Wildlife Heritage Foundation secured funding for a comprehensive study to investigate distemper (CDV) impacts on New Hampshire’s furbearers last year. The department initially requested turn-in of carcasses from grey foxes hunted or trapped during the legal hunting and trapping seasons. This year, that study has now expanded to include a desire for carcasses from both Red and Grey Fox, as well as Fisher.
A Tale of Two Reds: Old-world versus New-world Red Fox
What does the fox say? It depends on which of the 45 subspecies of red fox you ask! As it turns out, an original or “native” red fox subspecies did inhabit montane and glacial areas of North America prior to European settlement; it just wasn’t indigenous to where early settlers were colonizing in the eastern United States.