Ohio’s 1,145 red fox records reach 79 counties, with Summit well ahead and Hamilton, Franklin, Cuyahoga, and Lucas close behind. That spread makes the red fox one of the more widely reported carnivores in the state’s atlas.
A hunter of the in-between
Red foxes do best where habitat types meet: the seam of woods and meadow, farmland broken by hedgerows, brushy ravines behind suburbs. There a fox can hunt mice and voles in the open and bed down in cover, denning in a burrow it digs or takes over. The diet is broad, small rodents above all, plus rabbits, birds, insects, fruit, and whatever a town leaves out. Ohio’s record shows the same flexibility, running from the marsh edges of Magee Marsh Wildlife Area and Headlands Beach State Park on Lake Erie through Cuyahoga Valley National Park and Salt Fork State Park to the forested southeast at Wayne National Forest, Hocking Hills State Park, and the Edge of Appalachia Preserve.
A spring crest on a year-round animal
Reports climb to a sharp May peak. Foxes breed in midwinter, and pups are born in March or April, so by May a den is a busy place, parents shuttling food while young foxes play at the entrance, as visible as this species gets. Records continue in every month; the red fox neither hibernates nor migrates.
Status in Ohio
Native to Ohio and not listed as nonindigenous by USGS NAS, the red fox is ranked SNR, unranked, in the state by NatureServe. Globally it is G5, Secure, and the IUCN lists it as Least Concern.
Full species profile
