Minnesota’s 224 gray fox records split between two landscapes: the Arrowhead, with St. Louis and Lake counties, Superior National Forest, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and Voyageurs National Park, and the wooded edges of the Twin Cities metro, where Anoka and Ramsey counties and the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area hold much of the total. Both suit a fox that wants cover.
The fox that climbs trees
Unlike the red fox of open farm country, the gray fox is an animal of broken woods, thickets, and rocky outcrops, and it has a trick no other North American canid shares. Strong, curved claws let it climb leaning trunks and scramble branch to branch, escaping coyotes and dogs or reaching fruit and roosting prey, and it dens in hollow trees, brush piles, and rock crevices.
A steady calendar and a varied menu
Records come in at nearly the same pace every month, fitting a resident that neither migrates nor hibernates. Gray foxes hunt mice, rabbits, and birds through the year and lean heavily on fruit, nuts, and insects when they ripen, staying active under snow in the same wooded haunts they use in summer.
Status in Minnesota
NatureServe lists the gray fox SNR, Unranked, in Minnesota and G5, Secure, globally. Native to the state, it is not listed as nonindigenous by USGS NAS.
Full species profile
