Foxes are on the Peninsula all year, but the damage comes in two waves. The first is late winter into spring, when vixens are feeding cubs and lambs, kids and cria are on the ground. The second is autumn, when the year's cubs leave the den and go looking for easy food, which on the Peninsula usually means a chook run.
If you only control foxes once a year, do it in the four weeks before your first lambs or kids are due. A vixen with a den nearby will take a lamb a night, and a single night of thermal shooting before lambing removes the resident pair and often the den altogether.
Poultry losses are different. A fox that has found a chook run will come back every night until the run is empty or the fox is dead, so the right time to call is the night after the first loss. Lock the birds up, leave the run as it is, and we work the approach the fox has been using.
Baiting is rarely an option here. Most Peninsula blocks are too close to neighbours, dogs and public land for 1080 or PAPP, and the Shire's dog population makes it a real risk. Shooting is target-specific: every fox is identified through a thermal scope before a shot is taken.
One night is a start, not a finish. Foxes from neighbouring bush refill empty territory within weeks. We log every den we find with GPS and recommend a second visit three to six weeks after the first, then a monthly program through lambing for properties with a history of losses.