Arkansas’s 136 gray fox records reach from Sebastian and Pulaski counties north through the Ozark counties of Boone, Newton, and Carroll, with named sites at Mount Nebo State Park, Ozark National Forest, and the bottomland woods of White River and Cache River national wildlife refuges. This is a fox that rarely shows itself, hunting by night and slipping through cover, so every record represents an animal that is actually quite common.
The fox that climbs
The gray fox is the only North American canid that routinely climbs trees, rotating its forearms and gripping with hooked, semi-retractable claws to scramble up leaning trunks after birds, fruit, or a safe perch above a dog. Dense woodland is its element, from the rocky slopes of Devil’s Den State Park in the Ozarks to the flooded hardwood bottoms of the Delta refuges, and it feeds on everything from mice and rabbits to persimmons and insects.
A quiet calendar
Foxes pair up in late winter and den in hollow logs, rock crevices, or under root masses, with pups emerging in late spring. Arkansas records fall in every month and rise toward November, when the year’s young have dispersed and adults travel more widely to re-establish territories.
Status in Arkansas
NatureServe ranks the gray fox S5, Secure, and the species is native to Arkansas. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous in the state.
Full species profile
