West Virginia’s 83 gray fox records scatter across 21 counties, led by Preston, Hampshire, and Pendleton, with Potomac Wildlife Management Area holding the largest single cluster. That spread suits an animal of brushy woods and rocky ground that does most of its traveling after dark.
The fox that climbs
The gray fox is the only North American canid that routinely climbs trees. Rotating forearms and short, hooked claws let it scramble up leaning trunks and out along limbs, to escape dogs and coyotes, to rest, or occasionally to den well above the ground. Its grizzled salt-and-pepper back, rusty neck and legs, and black-tipped tail with a dark dorsal stripe separate it from the red fox in dim light.
An omnivore of brushy country
Where the red fox works open fields, the gray fox favors wooded and brushy ground, forest edges, thickets, and rocky hollows, which is most of West Virginia. Mice, rabbits, and other small prey anchor its diet, but it eats more fruit, insects, and other plant food than the red fox, shifting with the seasons. It dens in hollow logs, rock piles, and brushy slopes, and pups born in spring are traveling with their parents by late summer, the season when West Virginia’s reports tick upward.
Status in West Virginia
NatureServe ranks the gray fox S5, Secure, in West Virginia, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
