vulpicide

Noun

vulpicide (countable and uncountable, plural vulpicides)

1. (countable) Someone who kills foxes other than by hunting them with hounds.
   • Some of the foxes found dead on railway lines, by the way, have been put there after death by vulpicides.1910, Owen Jones, Marcus Woodward, A gamekeeper's note-book
   • ‘Seven months I've been worriting my guts out in London, and all on the off-chance of getting a seat in the office of that sanctimonious old vulpicide.’1928, Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Penguin, published 2013, page 121
2. The killing of a fox.
   • […]he who brought in the head of a wolf or a fox was entitled to a reward, for the crime of vulpicide, so justly odious in the nineteenth century, was actually encouraged in the dark ages!1846 July, The Foreign Quarterly Review, number 74
   • Nowhere is the crime of vulpicide more odious. An ardent sportsman, not many years since, is said at some public meeting to have thus tersely expressed himself:—‘Sir, I believe that a man who would kill a fox would kill his own father.’ This may appear strong language, but it shows the detestation...1862, The Quarterly Review, volume 111, number 222