Sly as a Fox

From where we parked the truck, Wolfe's Swamp looked as dark and uninviting as any cave. "Once your eyes get used to the night, it'll seem like high noon back in there, what with the snow and this full moon," said my dad, Mick, who by my best guess must have sensed my reluctance to walk voluntarily into the blackness.

"Besides," he continued with a smile, "with that pump gun stuffed with those 3-inch BBs, you're the nastiest thing out there in those woods." Good ol' Dad. He always did have a way with words.

And he was right. Our hike across the ice-covered beaver marsh turned out to be an easy walk. Arriving at the snowy hump that was a decade-old beaver lodge, we separated. The plan was for me to do the calling and look north while my father would cover the ground to the south and east.

The squall of the cottontail in distress split the 10-degree air like a cold chisel. Thirty seconds of high-pitched cries, then silence. No artificial light was necessary, thanks to Mother Nature's illuminating contribution of both snow and moonglow. Another 30 seconds of squealing was followed by another period of quiet.

Without warning, the night was shattered by the crash of my father's Remington 1100. An eerie silence followed, a quiet that was soon broken by Dad's, "Over here, Jake." A handful of tentative steps later I was kneeling at my father's side helping admire the prime gray fox at his feet.

"Stood out plain as day against the snow," said Dad, shouldering his prize. Even in the darkness, his ear-to-ear grin was unmistakable. "Ready for some hot coffee?" he asked, turning toward the truck and his waiting steel Thermos. A cup of coffee never tasted better.

To many outdoorsmen there's nothing more exciting than the adrenaline rush that comes with changing one's role from hunter to hunted. And that, in a nutshell, describes predator hunting. By his own admission, a man named Tad Brown loves nothing more than totally immersing himself in this wild role reversal. He is enthralled with the challenge of going one-on-one with some of North America's most wary game animals.

Brown makes his home in Preston, Missouri, which rests in a beautiful, rugged little piece of the Midwest known as the Missouri Ozarks. Here he serves as the manager of product development for MAD Calls, a position that allows him to experiment with an incredible variety of predator-related gadgets. Brown, 42, has been trapping since the age of eight, but for the last two decades he's turned much of his attention to the Show-Me State's phenomenal predator population.

Today, Brown stands as one of the nation's foremost authorities on the hunting of furbearers such as coyote, fox and bobcat. He readily admits that his expertise in outsmarting these wily critters wasn't always what it is today.

"My first successful predator hunt? Well, an old man had an old Burnham Brothers record player. It was a regular 45 record. I went to school with his boy, and one afternoon he said that he'd take me and his boy hunting. And I remember that my friend was going to operate the player. The old man went to the left and I went to the right. Well, by the time I got over to the log they told me to go to and sat down, the boy shot. He had called in a coyote and killed it. And I was hooked," Brown says.