The Average Size of Red Fox

 

All kinds of nonsense is written and said to justify over-large Kennel Club terriers that cannot fit down a hole. Yet, when push comes to shove, a very small dog is needed. As Barry Jones, terrierman to the Cotswold Foxhounds, a former Chairman and President of the Fell and Moorland Working Terrier Club, and the founding Chairman of the National Working Terrier Federation writes:

"I have not encountered a fox which could not be spanned at 14 inches circumference - this within a weight range of 10 lbs to 24 lbs, on average 300 foxes spanned a year."

In his excellent book The Working Jack Russell Terrier, Eddie Chapman writes:

"I am a small man and have reasonably small hands, but in more than 20 years in which I have handled well over 1000 foxes, I have never handled a full grown fox which came anywhere near the span of my hands"

In Foxes, Foxhounds & Foxhunting, written in 1923, Richard Clapham notes that:

"With regard to the weights of foxes, these differ considerably in various parts of the country. Roughly speaking the average dog fox weighs about 15lb., and the vixen 13½lb. It is quite safe to say that nowadays there are far more foxes under than over 16lb. The heaviest fox I have a record of, killed by hounds, was one of 23lb, which was run into by the Ullswater on Cross Fell. This fox measured 4ft. 4in. from tip of nose to end of brush, about 4in. of the latter being white. On the Lakeland fells weights of 18lb. and 19lb. are not uncommon, and this season 1921-22 I handled a 19½lb. fox killed by a fell pack. Extra heavy foxes are occasionally accounted for in the Midlands. When Frank Gillard was huntsman to the Belvoir, his hounds on one occasion killed a fox of 17½lb."

What is interesting is how quick show ring breeders leap over the fact that the average fox weights less than 15 pounds -- so great is their need to find a fox that weights a great deal more so that their over-large dogs can be seen as "correct."