I drive into the windmill paddock, and there is a ewe, cast on her side, on the edge of a gully. As I approach I see her, a large woolly sack slumped on the ground. She is dying, and in her last moments is being taunted by five foxes who have already eaten the soft parts of her and the lamb she has just struggled to give birth to. I’ve never seen so many fully grown foxes on one sheep. I am unmoved. I should really be upset. Before, I would have been. I call the dogs back, and they reluctantly obey.

I have always hated foxes, even though I know how stupid it is to hate an animal for the way it behaves. They are the worst of nature: ruthless, opportunistic, adaptable, and, of course, cunning. Autumn is the time when they are the biggest pest, because the vixens have cubs to feed, and I reckon it takes a lot of grasshoppers, crickets, native berries, and roots to keep milk up to a couple of fox cubs. A good feed of meat will fix that. This group of scavengers has thick, bushy red coats with no signs of the mange they often suffer from around here that will as good as kill them. They look like they’ve come out of a stud farm and will go on to successfully reproduce many more killers of the helpless and the native. I train my rifle on one of them, and take her out with a single shot. The others are gone, quickly disappearing into long grass that was never meant to protect them so well. I shoot the ewe, and drag her and the dead fox, and the remains of the lamb, down into the gully. It is as productive as I have been for months.

James didn’t like shooting much. It was the one thing that set him apart from his peers. All his mates loved shooting and spotlighting, and dreamed of getting their own rifle. When they got their first, they dreamed of getting a second and a third. James didn’t mind the rifle side of it so much, but he was uncomfortable with killing things. I’m not sure why. It’s the sort of sensitivity that farmers don’t acquire until they’re older. I kind of respected it about him. He never felt the need to do something just because everyone else did, which is pretty far-out for a teenager.