Gray foxes have a trick no other American wild dog can match: they climb trees, using hooked claws and wrists that rotate almost like a cat’s paw. That habit lines up well with the limestone bluffs and wooded hollows of the Shawnee Hills, where most Illinois records cluster, at Shawnee National Forest, Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge, and Cache River State Natural Area, rocky, timbered terrain with plenty to climb and hide in.
The state’s record count is thin: just 28 reports since 2000, enough to land the species in Illinois’s ‘rare’ bucket. NatureServe still calls it S5, Secure, here, since a low sighting count for a shy, nocturnal, cover-loving fox says more about how rarely people spot one than about its true numbers. Reports peak in December, with January and November close behind, which may just track when people are out in the woods rather than a real shift in the fox’s habits.
Unlike a red fox, which favors open edges, a gray fox in Illinois sticks close to the rocky, wooded cover the Shawnee Hills provide.
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