The Sad Tale of the Fox Versus Snowmobiles

This happened on the farm when I was about 14 years old in 1967. I was in the living room of our 3 bedroom South facing rambler on a sunny winter day, when I looked out towards one our our fields near the road. I noticed several snowmobiles racing around circles in our field. I also saw several pickup trucks and cars pull up and park on the road nearby.

Needless to say this activity was not sanctioned by my dad the land owner where these people were trespassing. There has always been a strong rural tradition of property rights and many of our neighbors had their land posted with no trespassing signs to dissuade hunters from shooting your livestock or shooting your family members when they were trying to harvest fall crops.

There is also a strong rural tradition of ignoring other peoples property rights when it gets in the way of you having fun, as in the case of these particular trespassers. In this case they were using the snowmobiles to track a fox across the landscape and they were using CB radios to communicate where to go next.

I grabbed the 7×35 pair of binoculars that we kept in the living room and watched what they were doing. The people on snowmobiles were circling the fox, running it over and over again. This barbaric act of cruelty did not seem to have any purpose other than the joy of killing an animal. I was infuriated. I was 14. And I strongly suspected that each and everyone of those people in cars and pickup trucks had some kind of gun.

There was no such thing as 911. And even if there was, it would take a sheriff deputy 30 minutes to an hour to show up. I had heard of rumors of a gang of rural thugs that would hunt and trespass on people’s land and when the owner complained, all of the tractors would have the oil plugs loosened, or sugar in the gasoline of the car. Or worse. There were rumors of barns burned and livestock lost in a fire. Even if none of that was true I had the very fact of their willingness to trespass in someone’s front yard in the middle of the day when someone was likely watching – and they didn’t care. They probably started the sugared gasoline and barn burning rumors themselves to cause fear. I am sure now that gave them an extra rush.

Before that incident I thought that snowmobiles were kind of fun. Me and Johny B, a farm next door neighbor would frequently use his dad’s snowmobile for winter adventures. But after this event I lost all respect for the people that use these machines. I have seen examples where snowmobilers shoot across the road in front of you, or go through the yards of town folk at midnight, of inconvenient fences being cut. It seemed to be a case of 99 percent of snowmobilers make the rest look bad.