Of 1,673 Wisconsin red fox records, Dane County alone accounts for 1,077, with Milwaukee, Waukesha, and Winnebago trailing far behind. Still, the record reaches 67 counties, from Crex Meadows Wildlife Area in the northwest to Perrot State Park on the Mississippi and Peninsula State Park in Door County.
An opportunist of the in-between
Red foxes thrive where cover meets open hunting ground: farm fields, marsh edges, woodlots, and town margins. Meadow voles and mice make up the core of the diet, and a fox hunts them by ear, listening for movement in grass or under snow before the familiar pounce. They den in abandoned woodchuck burrows and similar diggings, and their tolerance for people lets them hold on in farming country and suburbia where larger predators cannot. Wisconsin’s broad patchwork of agriculture and second-growth woods is close to ideal.
Busy at the den in spring
Foxes do not hibernate, and the Wisconsin counts stay strong straight through winter, when a red coat shows against snow and hungry animals hunt in the open by day. The record crests in May, when litters are growing at the den and adults make constant provisioning trips, turning normally wary animals into regular sights along field edges and quiet roads.
Status in Wisconsin
NatureServe ranks the red fox S4, Apparently Secure, in Wisconsin, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
