Podcast 005 – The 3 step fox deterrent strategy

Hi this is Ben from the Fox Repellent Expert website and welcome to episode 5 of this podcast.

In this episode I’m going to look at how you can keep foxes away from your garden using a simple 3 step fox deterrent strategy.

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If you’ve got foxes coming into your garden and causing mayhem, it can be difficult to know where to start when it comes to discouraging them from coming in.

There’s a lot of advice out there, a lot of different deterrents and repellents, and it can be confusing as to what you can do to ensure you’re not wasting your time and are actually having an impact.

Before I continue, I’ve mentioned this before but I think it’s worth repeating that it doesn’t make you a hater of foxes just because you want to reduce the damage they cause to your garden.

Maybe some of you do have a strong dislike of foxes but i imagine many of you are like me – i think foxes are fascinating creatures and I think we’re very lucky in the UK to get the range of wildlife that we do.

If you’re a regular BBC Springwatch or Winterwatch viewer, I’m sure you’ll agree. All creatures have an important role to play in our eco-system. However, that being said, it’s perfectly understandable to object to some of the fox’s more annoying behaviours and to want to do something about it in a way that’s humane and wildlife friendly. And that’s exactly what this 3 step strategy is about.

So I’ll get down off my soapbox and carry on with the podcast!

STEP 1 – THE ENTRY POINT

Whether you’ve tried deterring foxes before or you’re just considering it for the first time, the best place to start is to find the entry point – the place where the fox first enters your garden.

Foxes are creatures of habit and have their set daily routines just like humans do, and this makes them quite predictable. They will usually enter your garden at the same place every time and once you’ve discovered where that is, the entrance point should become the main focus of your fox deterrent efforts.

You might know already exactly where the fox comes in, but if you don’t it’s well worth making an educated guess or taking the time to find out. Over or under walls or fences, on flat roofs or through thick undergrowth are common places where they get in. Even with open gardens, the fox will usually take the same route in. If you’re really not sure, you could install a motion-activated trail camera to find out. These cameras are good at working it out plus they’re a really fun way of seeing what goes on in your garden when you’re not looking.

The reason finding the entry point is so important is because this is where the fox makes the decision as to whether or not it’s safe to enter your garden. This is the point where you have the biggest opportunity to influence this decision and make the fox decide to go elsewhere. Or at least cause it to limit the time it spends in your garden.

STEP 2 – USE DIFFERENT TYPES OF DETERRENT

So you’ve located where the fox comes in or you think you have a good idea where it is, and now you know the best place to use a deterrent. But which deterrent should you use?

Assuming you’ve blocked up any gaps in fences or refilled any holes

To get the most effective outcome, it’s best to use at least two different fox deterrents. These two deterrents should not be the same type of deterrent, instead they should target different senses from one another. What do I mean by this?

Well, let’s say you choose one of your deterrents to be a scent-based one like Scoot Fox Repellent. That targets a fox’s sense of smell.

The second repellent you choose should target a different sense. For example, The FoxWatch Ultrasonic Deterrent will target the fox’s sense of hearing.

You don’t have to stop at two. A third deterrent could be a flashing red Predator Eye which mimics a pair of eyes and targets the fox’s sense of sight.

A fourth could be a prickle strip or plastic fence spikes which targets the sense of touch.

You can choose as many deterrents as your budget or the situation allows. But to get started try two fox deterrents and make them different from one another.

Foxes rely heavily on their senses to alert themselves to danger so if at least two of the fox’s senses are throwing out warning signals, you’re more likely to achieve success in keeping them away.

STEP 3 – BE PATIENT

Probably the least exciting of the 3 steps but also the most overlooked. There’s no getting away from the fact that, if you want to successfully deter foxes from your garden, you need to be patient.

Foxes are wild animals that are very persistent. and you are trying to train them to change their habits and have a different attitude to your garden. This kind of change takes time and they are not simply going to disappear overnight because you’ve decided you’ve had enough.

If you use a deterrent in your garden, the fox will be back to see if this is a mild inconvenience or whether this is a more permanent problem. Where a lot of people go wrong is by thinking they only need to use a deterrent once or twice, and that should solve the problem. When it inevitably doesn’t, they deem the product a failure and don’t use it again. The fox discovers that the deterrent was simply a mild inconvenience and it will continue to visit the garden as normal.

If that person had been patient and persisted they may well have discovered that the fox started to pay attention and reduced it’s visits as it learnt to associate the garden with the deterrent.

This point is particularly applicable to scented deterrents as they require more manual input than an ultrasonic, visual or touch-based deterrent.

So the takeaway from this step is to be patient, keep faith with your deterrents and expect a gradual reduction in the fox’s visits rather than a sudden disappearance. Treating it as a marathon not a sprint is the way to approach successful fox deterrence and it will help you to feel that you are indeed making progress as time goes on.

OUTRO

That’s it for this episode of the Fox Repellent Expert Podcast. I hope it’s given you an idea of where to start with deterring foxes from your garden. You can find the show notes to this episode, including links to the things I mentioned by going to foxrepellentexpert.com/episode5

If you want any more information on how to humanely deter foxes from your garden, please visit foxrepellentexpert.com. Thanks for listening and I’ll see you next time.