Hybrid Animal – Coombes Valley?

I work as a ranger in the Coombes Valley, a heavily wooded area which covers around 600 acres in the county of Staffordshire. One of my responsibilities is checking that the trails are safe for the public to use, this one day whilst in Spirithole Woods I had been checking the trails in the far end of the valley which was quite remote, I happened to take a photograph of what I initially thought was a fox, however when I got home and I examined the photo in more detail I could see that this wasn’t so.

Photograph by Gary Tacagni.

Although the colouring seems lighter than a fox, it would appear to have the tail of a fox, however when I enlarged part of the photograph of the head and neck there seems to be horns on its head. The head appears to be shaped more like a deer, that being said I have never seen a deer with a fox’s tail before!