THE BADGER
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THE BADGER
A MONOGRAPH
ALFRED E. PEASE, M.P.
AUTHOR OF
HE CLEVELAND HOUNDS AS A TRENCHER-FED PACK,'
"HORSE BREEDING FOR FARMERS," ETC.
LONDON
LAWRENCE AND BULLEN, LTD.
1 6, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
All rights reserved
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON & BUNGAY.
7.4 ST
' Hunting it is the noblest exercise,
Makes men laborious, active, wise ;
Brings health and doth the spirits delight ;
It helps the hearing and the sight :
It teacheth arts that never slip
The memory good horsemanship,
Search, sharpness, courage, and defence,
And chaseth all ill-habits thence." BEN JONSON.
8GG482
THE BADGER
PART I
I DO not know of the existence of any
monograph on the Badger, ancient or modern,
in English or any other language. Nor have
I been able to find any adequate description
in any work on natural history or British
fauna of this the largest, and by no means the
least interesting, of the real wild animals that
still exist in England and Wales. So that,
however unfitted I may be to write a
scientific treatise on the last of the bear tribe
that we have yet with us, I have ventured
to think that my own observations and
researches, with experiences of the chase of
this troglodyte, may be of interest to lovers
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of the animal world, and to not a few
sportsmen.
From my boyhood all wild animals have
had for me an intense fascination, and though
in later years my hunting-grounds have been
for the most part in other countries and
continents, and among larger game, I doubt
if any of the beasts whose acquaintance I
have thus made has been a source of
greater interest to me than the badger.
The charm of an animal for man, where the
sporting is the master instinct, appears to be
measured by his capacity to elude observa-
tion and defy pursuit ; and the badger,
judged by this test, is a charming creature.
I may be mistaken, but to me it appears that
the chase in its widest sense is one of the
best schools for studying nature. Such
knowledge as I have gained of the badger
has been due to the indulgence of this
" brutal " instinct, as it is profanely called,
and from quiet observation. If the reader
will spare a little time, I will show him the
manner in which my observations are made,
but I warn him that there is nothing
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scientific about them. I have no microscope
and no dissecting-room.
It is June. A hot summer's day is dying,
and the sun is sinking through soft clouds of
glory behind the pine woods on the hill. A
thousand birds in vale and woodland are
singing with an ecstasy and sweetness that
seem tenderly conscious that the hours of
song are numbered that the days are
coming when darkness or dawn will steal
over the land in silence, unheralded as it
is to-day by their wild sweet notes. We
wander across the pasture by the cattle, and
along the side of the ripening meadow
towards the wooded bank under the edge
of the moor, where the badger has his home.
As we near the covert, a few rabbits that
have ventured far out into the field frisk up
the hill, alarming their less adventurous com-
panions, and all make for the shelter of the
wood, displaying a hundred little cotton tails.
As the gate into the plantation opens a
few wood-pigeons stop their cooing and fly
swiftly up and out of the trees with a clean
cutting slap-slap of their wings to some other
3
THE BADGER
solitude safer from intrusion. Once in the
shadow of the firs, softly treading we come
up-wind to the badger " set." Here we
choose a place among the larch stems which
gives us a good view of the most-used
entrances to the earth, some fifteen yards
from the nearest hole. We turn up our
coat-collars, draw our caps over our faces,
and settle ourselves in such positions as will
least try our patience and muscles during the
hour in which we must remain immovable.
In idea nothing could be more delightful
than to sit in the deepening twilight of a
summer's evening, with a soft breath of
air stirring the feathery larch tops against
the sky above, the ground carpeted with
the vivid green of the opening bracken,
surrounded by the music of cooing wood-
pigeons, the full notes of blackbird and
thrush, and listening to the pleasant sounds
carried on the breeze from the distant farms.
Delightful as is the enjoyment of the con-
fidences of Nature in her most hidden soli-
tudes, the pleasure has its price, and the
angler on a summer's eve can sympathize
4
THE BADGER
with the man who sits over a badger earth.
But he at least can protect himself to some
extent against the exasperating attacks of
midges in myriads, and vent his feelings
aloud, and flog the waters, whilst the latter
must stoically endure the torture and the
plague. The most he can do is occasionally
to draw his hand from his pocket, and slowly
move it to his face and massacre the settlers
on his nose, his ears, his neck, and carefully
move it again into its hiding-place. In spite
of the torment, however, he may enjoy the
sights and sounds, known to but few, that
these witching hours alone can give. The
rabbits emerge within a yard of him, first the
little ones, unconscious of his eye, then the
old ones sit up and, imitating his immov-
ability, watch him critically with their black
beady eyes set, and noses palpitating ; after
a while old paterfamilias gives his signal of
alarm or warning by a sharp pat, pat with
his hind foot, telling all round that there is
something in his vicinity he does not know
how to account for. The cry of the startled
blackbird warns that some other enemy is
5
THE BADGER
on foot as he flies from the bur-tree to the
thorn, and we see an old fox moving through
the young bracken with lowered head and
brush, starting off on his nightly raid. A
belated squirrel throws himself from the tree
above, runs close by us on the ground, up
the stem of a larch, and is soon lost in the
sea of green above. A numerous and dis-
sipated family of little crested wrens, which
should have settled for the night ere this,
twitter with diminutive voices as they twist
in and out and hang on the boughs of the
spruce in front of us.
Gradually, as the daylight fades, one after
another of the singers becomes silent, the
sounds of day are hushed, and a perfect
silence reigns in the twilight amidst the
trees. Without any warning we are con-
scious of the clean black-and-white face of
an old badger over the earthwork outside
his hole, and presently he is all in view,
sitting with bowed fore-legs and his head
turning on his lithe outstretched neck, scent-
ing the night air. There is nothing to excite
his suspicion, so he shambles to the nearest
THE RA0GER
tree, puts up his fore-feet and rubs his neck,
smells round the well-known trunk, and
having satisfied himself that all is as usual,
sits for awhile admiring the limited landscape
before him. He then shuffles a few yards
from the earth, scratches the soil here and
there as if to keep his digging tools in order,
and returns to the bottom of the tree.
Another pied face appears, and more quickly
than the first she trundles off to join her
mate, and they bounce along one after another
over the earths, round the trees, down one
hole and out at another, and then rest awhile
outside the earth they first emerged from.
Three more come forth, and go through very
much the same programme as the first, snort-
ing and bumping along one after the other
and one against the other.
Presently one takes off into the thickest
covert. You can hear him bumping along,
sweeping through the bracken and crackling
the dead wood. Presently the others come
past you, tumbling along so close that you
could hit them with your stick. Probably
they take no notice, but if you wink, wince,
7
THE BADGER
or move they will shamble back to the earth
and watch you for ten minutes. It is then a
trial for your nerves. If you move you have
seen the last of them for the night, but if you
succeed in being perfectly still they will recover
sufficient confidence to sally forth again, but
will take off quickly in different directions for
their night's ramble. Then at last we may
raise our stiff limbs and turn our steps
through the dark woods, leaving the fox and
badger to their devices, and once more
frightening the rabbits which flash past us
as we wade homewards through the grass
heavy and wet with dew. We have made
no startling discovery on this our first night
together by the badger "set," but probably
we have made a better acquaintance with
badgers in this hour than we could have
gained in any museum of natural history,
with the assistance of the most erudite Fellow
of the Zoological Society.
To understand and appreciate all sides of
the badger's character you must see him in
war as well as at peace ; and such knowledge
has to be purchased by great labour and
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bodily fatigue. In the name of sport, as in
the name of liberty, great crimes are often
committed. There are those who look upon
hunting of all sorts as cruel and degrading,
and cannot understand the pleasures of a
chase involving the distress of pursuit or
pain to any animal. I have a certain sym-
pathy for such sentiments, and yet, para-
doxical as it may appear, my very love of
animals increases my passion for hunting
them. Besides the longing to come to close
quarters with them, the desire to possess or
to handle them, there is the natural ambition
to be even with them. There is an un-
written code of honour in the field which, if
followed, makes the struggle of wits and
strength, of skill and endurance, a fair one,
and one in which alone many a valuable
lesson out of Nature's book can be taught.
To relieve any tender consciences amongst
my readers I may here declare, without wish-
ing to reflect on brother sportsmen whose
methods are more Cromwellian, that when
victorious in the war with a badger, when,
after many a hard-fought battle in his sub-
9
THE BADGER
terranean fortress when mine and counter-
mine, tunnel, shaft, and trench have driven
him fighting to his last stand in his deepest
and innermost citadel, and he has been
forced to capitulate I have never abandoned
him to a victorious soldiery howling for
blood, but have always given him honourable
terms. I have never willingly or wantonly
killed a badger ; he has invariably become
a pampered prisoner, or been transported to
some new home, where some one whom I
had interested in his species was prepared to
give him protection, and a new start in life.
Among those who have given my badgers
protection I may name Mr. Edward North
Buxton, who has done so much to maintain
the natural beauty of Epping Forest, and to
protect wild life within its borders. I know
of several thriving colonies of badgers within
the forest precincts descended from my
prisoners of war.
I have kept many badgers in confinement,
but never to " try " my dogs, and all my
terriers learnt their trade in legitimate
fashion. Badger-baiting I unreservedly con-
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demn it is as much a profanation of sport
as coursing bagged hares in enclosed
grounds. There are degrees of wickedness,
and when a badger is placed in a properly-
constructed badger-box there are few terriers
that would not be vanquished in the en-
counter. The figure below illustrates the
correct box.
FIG. i.
One of the atrocious methods by which
the badger was baited in the last century is
described and denounced in volume xii. of
the Sporting Magazine, 1788. "They dig
a place in the earth about a yard long, so
that one end is four feet deep. At this end
a strong stake is driven down. Then the
badger's tail is split, a chain put through it,
and fastened to the stake with such ability
that the badger can come up to the other
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end of the place. The dogs are brought
and set upon the poor animal, who some-
times destroys several dogs before it is
killed."
Badger-baiting, it seems, was the price the
race had to pay for its existence, and with
the happy disuse of a brutal sport the harm-
less badger has been doomed to extinction.
The only method by which any British wild
animal can be preserved from extinction in
this age of what is termed progress, is to
hunt it. Who can doubt, that if fox-hunting
and otter-hunting were stopped to-day, both
these creatures would be extinct within the
next few years? It may be a hard bargain
to make with them, but considering their
own crimes of violence, and their incompati-
bility with "civilization," it does not seem to
be a too severe condition to impose on the
fox and the otter, that if they are permitted
to live they must at least submit to the risks
and fortunes of the chase. Not being able
to do more than speculate on the intellectual
and nervous capacity of animals, we are apt
to assign to them some measure of human
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powers of thought and feeling. Undoubtedly
they are physically less sensitive, and we
probably err when we ascribe to them more
than a slight ability to anticipate, or credit
them with such sentiments as anxiety, mental
distress, and those thoughts and sensations
that in the main make pain intolerable.
Those species that have long been associated
with man have, I think, a greater capacity
for suffering. The individuality of each
domestic race has been developed ; the
difference of temperament and character of
each individual becomes more marked, and
more or less humanized, according to the
influences by which it is surrounded. There
is a more uniform character and greater simi-
larity of temperament among wild animals,
and the more refined the civilization and the
more cultivated the senses, the more sensi-
tive will the whole animal become. This
may be seen in the most common of Nature's
operations. The wild beast produces its
young with ease and without pain. With
woman, raised amidst the refinements of
civilization, the same operation is with every
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precaution and assistance sometimes a danger-
ous, always an agonizing ordeal.
No, the terms are not hard. Take the
case of a fox, the most hunted of animals.
The ordinary lot of a fox compared with that
of any other creature, wild or domestic, or
even with man himself, is not an unenviable
one. Unlike the domestic animals, he is not
born into servitude or to die in early life by
the butcher's knife or axe. Happier than
man, he lives his life, whether longer or
shorter, free from the worries, cares, and the
thousand ills which flesh is heir to. The
fox's life is free as air. Protected for the
most part from the natural consequences
of his marauding disposition, fair play is
given to him to avoid the punishment he
deserves by . the exercise of that strategy,
activity, and endurance with which he is
so abundantly endowed. Two or three
days in the three hundred and sixty-five
he may have to exert himself more or less
to save his brush, or the end may come
swiftly and suddenly after a long run ; but
even so, are there not many of us who would
14
THE BADGER
be glad to know that our death would come
as swiftly and painlessly to us as to the fox,
who, flying for forty minutes before the pack,
confident, perhaps, to the last that he is a
match for his pursuers, is rolled over in his
stride ? The sportsman may pity the sink-
ing fox, with every desire to see the victory
of the straining pack, in the moment when,
after gallantly standing up before hounds, a
straight-necked veteran finds he has shot his
last bolt, and turns with fire yet in his eye to
meet death in its swiftest form.
There is something strange in the mixture
of pain with pleasure. My little son comes
out cub-hunting with me in the early morn-
ing of a September day. He is the picture
of delight, sitting on his pony among the
hounds, the effigy of enjoyment as he follows
them with his and his pony's head just above
the high bracken, the incarnation of satis-
faction as he receives his first brush and is
blooded. He is none the less a little sports-
man for sobbing himself to sleep at night
with his brush hugged under the bedclothes,
because of the thought that the bright little
'5
THE BADGER
cubs he saw killed will never again run in
and out of the wood on the hillside as of
yore. I look into his room the following day,
and find him in his night-shirt busy extract-
ing the tail -bone from his trophy, and he
stops in his work only to ask when the
hounds will be out again.
The power of enjoying hunting of any sort
is no evidence of want of tenderer feelings.
It may be that the days of sport are
numbered by the exigencies of what is
termed the progress of civilization ; but
whether men's hearts will be braver, their
bodies and minds healthier, or their natures
kindlier and happier for the change, only
time may show. All this is something in the
nature of apology ; but, excuse or none, thou-
sands are conscious that the nearest approach
to pure unmixed pleasure that they have
known has been derived from the chase,
where cares are forgotten, pulses quickened,
eyes brightened, and the mind refreshed.
About conscious or unconscious vicarious
sacrifice with regard to the badger I will
not say more than this, that the baiting of
16
THE BADGER
an animal in confinement, even though he be
but the scapegoat for a thousand of his kind,
is so repugnant to humanity, and so likely to
breed cruelty, that though I lament his im-
minent extinction I would say, "perish Meles
taxus " rather than let him pay this price for
the continuance of his race, and, whatever
view he might have himself, I would refuse
him the option.
The badger has made a wonderful struggle
for existence, and may linger on for many
years yet in the more secluded corners of
England and Wales (in Scotland he is almost
extinct), but he owes all to his own mys-
terious silent ways, and nothing to man's
mercy in the matter. The intelligent and
unprejudiced wearers of velveteen, who, with
the tacit consent of their masters, have by
means of the steel trap, flag-trap, and gun,
exterminated and banished for ever the most
interesting of our animals and the most
beautiful of our birds, have hitherto failed in
their ruthless attempt to ricl earth and heaven
of everything but furred and feathered game,
so far as the badger is concerned. In many
17 c
THE BADGER
English counties, however, the badger has
given in before ceaseless digging, snaring,
and shooting, and the silent covert where he
had his earth, where he dug and delved and
made his wonderful subterranean stronghold,
knows him no more. He has gone with the
polecat, the pine marten, the wild cat, the
harriers, the buzzards, and a host of the
brightest and loveliest of our birds. Guilt-
less of the crimes of his fellow-victims against
game, he was and is still ignorantly classed
under that all-embracing word of the keeper,
" vermin." There are few who lament his
disappearance save perhaps the makers of
shaving-brushes, and the old people whose
faith in the efficacy of " badger-grease " can
no longer find the opportunity of exercising
the same. This faith is an old one. I read
in the Sporting Magazine, 1 800, volume xvii.
" The flesh, blood, and grease of the
badger are very useful for oils, ointments,
salves, and powders, for shortness of breath,
the cough of the lungs, for the stone,
sprained sinews, coll-achs, etc. The skin,
being well dressed, is very warm and com-
18
THE BADGER
fortable for ancient people who are troubled
with paralytic disorders." Evidently a few
badgers in the good old days supplied the
place of the country doctor. About the
fancied or really mischievous habits of the
badger I shall have something to say later
on.
PART II
THE badger (Meles taxns, or Ursus
meles] is known under various aliases, viz.
the Brock (Danish Broc, Erse Broc, Welsh
Brock), the Pate, and the Grey. Of these
the Brock is perhaps the commonest, and is
the name most used in the north of England.
There is an expression common in the north
that would lead the ignorant to believe that
a badger perspires, or sweats, viz. " sweating
like a brock." In Yorkshire I often hear a
man say, " Ah sweats like a brock," and the
user of this elegant metaphor innocently
imagines he is perspiring like a badger. But
" brock " is the old north-country word for the
insect known as " cuckoo-spit " (Aphrophora
spumaria), which covers itself in the larval
state with froth and foam (cf. Welsh brock,
THE BADGER
foam) vide Atkinson's Dictionary of the
Cleveland Dialect. In parts of Cornwall
and Wales the word " Grey " may be in
use, but I myself have only come across it in
books, more especially old ones. Though
able to boast these several titles, there is but
one species known in Europe, and in general
appearance he is the same animal, though
varying locally in size and shade of colour.
He has been classed as belonging to the
bear tribe, but the badger is really a single
species and a sub-genus in itself. The den-
tition of a badger is half tuberculous and half
carnivorous, and in this respect approaches
the martens.
About few animals has there been more
nonsense written in regard to habits and
anatomy, and for many of the popular notions
concerning the badger there is no foundation
whatever. In the ancient books descriptive
of sport and wild animals we read that there
were in England two kinds of badger the
one as we know it, and the other a " pig-
badger," with cloven hoofs and other attri-
butes of the porker. It is astonishing how
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these old authors drew upon their imagination,
and where they found suggestions for their
errors. In this case it may be they were
misled by the custom, which still continues,
of distinguishing between the dog and bitch,
or male and female badger, by using the terms
boar and sow ; or it may be the idea dawned
whilst they ate their rasher from a badger
ham !
There are altogether not more than five (or
perhaps six) kinds of badger known through-
out the world, so far as I know. 1
i. The European badger, known over
almost the whole of Europe and Asia. 2. A
larger species, confined to the high steppes
of Eastern Siberia. 3. The North American
mistonusk, or chocaratouch (Meles labradorica
or hudsonius}. 4. The Mexican badger,
found south of latitude 35 degrees. 5. The
Japanese badger. 6. The Indian badger
1 Lydekker, whose authority I accept, enumerates four
kinds of badger
1. The American (Taxidea americana).
2. The Common (Meles taxus).
3. Malayan (Mydaus meliceps).
4. The Sand-badger (Arctonyx collaris).
THE BADGER
(Meles indica) might be added perhaps,
though it has a pig's snout, long legs, and
long tail. Its native name is bhalloo-soor,
i. e. the bear pig.
Nos. 3 and 4, the chocaratouch and
Mexican, differ so distinctly from the others
in dentition, though in appearance similar to
the European species, that a new genus,
Taxidea, has been established for their
reception. 1
Popular error, and old writers, describe
the badger as 'having his legs shorter on one
side than the other, and the latter, with
philosophical ingenuity, have discovered
therein a wonderful provision of nature ;
for, says Nicholas Cox, "He hath very
sharp Teeth, and therefore is accounted a
deep-biting beast ; his back is broad, and his
legs are longer on the right side than the
left, and therefore he runneth best when he
gets on the side of an Hill or a Cart roadway."
The same author also states " Her manner
1 In Lower California there is a variety of badger
which differs from described forms by its dark colouration
and broad nuchal stripe.
2 3
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is to fight on her back, using thereby both
her Teeth and her Nails, and by blowing up
her Skin after a strange and wonderful
manner she defendeth herself against any
blow and teeth of Dogs. Only a small stroke
on her Nose will dispatch her presently. You
may thrash your heart weary on her back,
which she values as a matter of nothing." If
such a provision in the matter of legs did
exist, one can realize the comfort of the
uneven legs on a hill-side, but what gravels
us is the discomfort of the return journey!
The rolling, shambling gait that characterizes
the badger is doubtless the origin of this
absurd theory, which might be equally
applied to any other member of the bear
family. The European badger, as we find
him in England, Wales, Scotland, and
Ireland, stands about ten to twelve inches
from the ground, has a long, stout body, with
the belly near the earth. He has a coat so
long and dense, and legs so short, that he
appears to travel very nearly ventre a terre.
The male is somewhat larger than the female,
and weighs more. The weight of a male is
24
THE BADGER
about 25 Ibs., that of a female about 22 Ibs.
When they are fat, or in grease in September,
they will scale more. Badgers have been
known to weigh up to about 40 Ibs. ; the
largest I ever dug out and weighed was
an old lean dog badger that scaled over
35 Ibs.
The head of the badger is wedge-shaped
in general conformation, the back of the head
large, the cheek-bones well sprung, and the
muzzle fine and long. The nose or snout
is black in colour, long and full ; the eyes
small, black, or black-blue ; and the ears
small, round, close-set, and neat. The
strength of a badger's legs is most remarkable,
and for his size (the animal only weighs
from 19 Ibs. to 35 Ibs.) he possesses a most
wonderful combination of bone and muscle.
The legs are very short and the joints large ;
the feet, like the legs, are nearly black, and
are large and long. The badger is a planti-
grade, that is, when travelling he puts down
the whole of his foot, including the heel, flat
on the ground. His fore-feet are larger,
longer, and better equipped for digging than
25
THE BADGER
his hind, but all are armed with long, sharp
claws, and it is prodigious what he can effect
with them. There is no mistaking his tracks
no animal's footprint is in the least like his.
His heel is large and wide ; this, and his four
round, plump toes, leave an impression in
sand, mud, or snow that cannot be con-
founded with any other. If the mud is deep,
or there is snow on the ground, he also
leaves the mark of his claws, but as a rule
these are not observable, as he puts his
weight on the sole of his foot his tracks are
usually almost in a line. The badger is cut
out for a miner. His wedge-shaped head is
capable of forcing a passage through sand
and soft strata, whilst his armour-tipped
diggers are worked by machinery that rivals
in power the steam navvy ; and whilst his
fore-feet are going like an engine, throwing
stones, bits of rock, sand, clay, and all that
he comes in contact with between his fore-
legs (which are set wide apart, leaving plenty
of room under the chest), his powerful hams
are working his hind-legs and feet like little
demons, throwing back all that the fore-feet
26
THE BADGER
throw under his belly. And this is not all.
His powerful jaw and teeth will cut, break,
and tear all roots that obstruct his passage
onwards, and it is most entertaining to see
him going through earth, shale, and stone
with the rapidity and sustained energy of a
machine. No one who has not seen it would
credit what one of these animals can do. I
have often been defeated by their being able
to penetrate more quickly than even a gang of
men with pick-axe, spade, shovels, and crow-
bar could follow. And it is safe to say that
as long as a terrier is not up to the badger,
the badger is not only advancing quicker
than the men (if his earth is on a hill-side),
but has also, in nine cases out of ten, barri-
caded his retreat and scored a victory. I
have known a badger, left for awhile by the
terrier, bore his way straight up out to day-
light and escape. The badger is covered
with a thick, long-haired coat, which with a
loose skin of extraordinary density and tough-
ness forms a complete and effective armour.
The hair on his head is short and smooth,
and the sharp, clean black-and-white markings
27
THE BADGER
of his head give a very pretty and effective
appearance to it. The general appearance
in colour of a badger is a sort of silvery-grey,
turning to black on the throat, breast, belly,
and legs. Inverting the usual colouring of
other animals, which is generally dark on the
back, with lighter colouring on the belly and
under the arms and thighs, the badger is
lighter on the back and black underneath.
FIG. 2.
Not only is this colouring peculiar to the
badger, but his hair is unlike that of any
other creature known to me, being light at
the root and darker above.
The colour of a badger alters with age.
The little cubs, till they are seven or eight
months old, are a clean, bright, light silvery-
grey ; they then become yellower in their
coats, a colour which they keep sometimes
permanently, but which they generally change
28
THE BADGER
after two years for a suit of darker, purer
grey. The badger's tail is about five inches
long, covered with long, coarse, lighter-
coloured hair than that on his body, and is
of a yellowish-brown colour.
The badger has another peculiar distinction
that is somewhat mysterious, viz. a pouch,
the vent of which is close under the root of
the tail, and contains an oily foetid matter
which he has the power of emitting. Differ-
ent uses have been ascribed to this provision,
such as that which ferrets and polecats have.
I have, never noticed a badger use it as
has been suggested, as a mode of defence
or annoyance, and am sure that this is not
its purpose. But there is no doubt the
badger sucks and licks this substance, whether
by way of taking a tonic, a cooling draught,
a stimulant, or other physic I cannot say. I
am, however, inclined to believe that from
this source he is able to maintain his health
and support life during those periods of
seclusion and total retirement in his " earth "
which have led naturalists to describe him as
a hibernating animal.
29
THE BADGER
In this theory I am strengthened by a
French author, Edmond Le Masson, who
writes " The badger does not always give
evidence of his presence in his woody retreat.
. . . There, should one go to see him, he
may, from pure idleness, remain shut up, it
being easy for him to support himself during
the longest period of retirement by licking
the secretion which oozes from the pouch
under his tail." The author goes on to give
an account which was sent to the French
papers by M. Recope, Garde General at
Marly-le-Roi, of a badger that was shut in a
culvert without any food whatever for forty-
five days, walled in on every side, and where
no tree root could penetrate. A gamekeeper,
a noted trapper, had blocked the exit, and
tried in every way he could devise to trap
him, from February 18, 1853, to April 4,
and when at last he succumbed to a ruse of
the keeper's he was quite lively, and weighed
nearly 19 Ibs. It appears that however care-
fully his traps were set in the mouth of the
exit, the badger came every night and rolled
on them and struck them, as they will do
3
THE BADGER
when they suspect any human infernal
machine. That he will remain for a week
or two at a time without issuing from his
" earth " is certain, but the most casual
observer will see badger tracks in the snow
in the severest weather, and I have never
been able to find that there were no tracks in
the snow issuing from the " earths " in winter
for more than a week or two at a time.
The badger is less active, eats less, goes
fewer and shorter journeys in winter, and
has a hibernating tendency ; but the idea
that the British species shuts himself up
and takes to his bed through the winter
months, and never comes forth till spring, is
a fallacy.
Having attempted a slight description of
the badger as far as his exterior is concerned,
I shall leave to " Dryasdust " the description
and nomenclature of the badger's interior
economy, as well as the enumeration, weights,
and measurements of his bones and muscles.
He possesses, however, one or two structural
peculiarities that deserve a little attention.
There is much similarity in the general
3 1
THE BADGER
conformation of the badger's and bear's skull,
but the protecting ridge on the head is absent
in the bear. What gives to the badger's jaw
its proverbial and terrific force ? To witness
its work is to know that its power of biting,
crushing, and holding must be the result of
some peculiarly strong mechanical as well as
muscular construction. The examination of
the skull helps in the solution of the mystery.
FIG. 3. Lower Jaw of Badger.
The conformation of the jaw is strong, and
the muscles attached to it powerful ; but
besides this he has two distinguishing
structural additions that give his jaws, fur-
nished with his formidable teeth, the strength
and retentive power of an iron vice. The
first is that his lower jaws are locked into
sockets in the skull, and are thereby made
unlike those of all other animals I know of
32
THE BADGER
impossible of dislocation. 1 His head or skull,
when stripped of flesh and bare, still retains
the lower jaws in such a way that they
cannot be displaced without fracturing the
massive bones of the head or jaw. The
teeth of a badger require respectful attention.
There are eighteen teeth in the lower and
sixteen in the upper jaw, in all thirty-four.
The four big molars, two above and two
FIG. 4. Dovetailed Jaws.
below, are large and strong, the upper being
much the larger and wider ones, the lower
being longer and fitting within the upper, as
do all the lower teeth. The four canines are
large, thick, round, long and formidable, and
are his chief weapons. The lower canines
dovetail when the jaws close with the upper,
1 The curved ridges of bone on the skull by which the
lower jaw is held in its place by gripping the condyle are
more or less well developed in most of the weasel family.
33 D
THE BADGER
but all the four points or ends turn outward
and backward.
The second peculiarity arises from a high
ridge of bone, standing straight up and run-
ning from the base of the skull to between
the ears, giving a firm hold to the ligaments
FIG. 5. Skull of Badger front view.
and tendons, and an additional leverage and
length, which are again rendered more
effective by passing over the high cheek-
bones as over a pulley before reaching the
jaws. There is a saying that "a badger
never leaves go till he makes his teeth
meet," and there is a foundation of truth in
34
THE BADGER
it. The length of time he will hold on to
the limb of an enemy is certainly fearful, and
the way in which his thick strong canines
go through the bone. On one occasion, in
Wales, a keeper residing near the place I was
staying at thought he saw the badger's tail
at the end of a badger-digging, and laid
FIG. 6. Skull side view.
hold of it to draw him. He had made a
terrible mistake, and had got hold of a hind-
foot. The badger held him by the wrist
for ten minutes with his arm stretched up
the hole ; when he let go his hold the hand
was hanging by a few shreds, and had, of
course, to be amputated. I have always
35
THE BADGER
drawn a badger when possible by the tail, as
the use of the tongs is sometimes difficult,
especially in certain holes and at great depths,
and there is a liability for the tongs to give
way, and then the badger charges in your
face or through your legs. I have seen a
badger's teeth break and fly off in chips from
iron tongs, a sight and sound that is not
pleasant. To one who knows how to do it,
drawing by the tail is a simple, quiet, and
effective way of " taking the brock."
A badger has the proverbial nine lives
that John Chinaman attributes to women
and we to cats. You cannot kill a badger
by a blow on the head, the structure is so
dense. His brain is so well protected by the
ridges of bone along his skull and over his
eye-sockets, and by the strength and pro-
jection of his cheek-bones, as to make him
all but invulnerable in that quarter. His
skin is so thick and tough, and his coat so
heavy and coarse, that shot will scarcely
penetrate it ; but he has one place as tender
as a nigger's shins, and that is his nose,
where, if he is struck once, he is instantly
36
THE BADGER
dispatched. I was witness of a scene in the
hunting field with the Cleveland hounds
during the mastership of the late Mr. Henry
Turner Newcomen, which, however dis-
gusting, illustrated the vitality of the badger.
We thought we had run a fox to ground in
a drain. The terriers were sent for, one was
put in to bolt him, but after a quarter of an
hour's attempt he came out, having given it
up, with severe marks of punishment. One
that could be depended on was then dis-
patched to ground, and digging operations
commenced. As time went on we thought
from the sound that it could not be a fox,
and presently there was a charge down the
drain, and a badger came bouncing and
floundering out among the crowd of by-
standers, the terrier holding on to him. The
other terriers, barking furiously to join in the
fray, excited the hounds in an adjoining field ;
they broke out past the whips, and nineteen
couple were soon at the badger, who was
entirely lost to view in the struggling and
worrying mass. But he was plying his jaws
all the time, as was evidenced by the howls
37
THE BADGER
of pain from the wounded hounds as they
withdrew from this unaccustomed entertain-
ment. The whips and others did their best
to flog the hounds off, but this was not
accomplished for at least ten minutes. After
much bloodshed, and when the last hound
had been choked off, the badger showed
neither scratch nor wound, and looked as
fresh as possible. Mr. Newcomen ordered a
whip to despatch him and end the tragedy.
The whip clubbed a weighted hunting-stock,
striking him several smashing blows on the
head, and left him apparently dead. A
farmer having asked if he might have him
to stuff, put him in a sack and carried him
off. A few days later I met the farmer, Mr.
R. Brunton, of Marton, and he told me that
when he got home the badger was as lively
as ever, so he put him on a collar and chain
and fastened him to a kennel. The day
following he thought, from the appearance
of the badger, that he was hurt about the
head, and with some difficulty examined him,
and found that the lower jaw was injured.
He thereupon got a revolver and fired a
38
THE BADGER
shot into his ear, and then he assured me
the badger only shook his head. He was
so taken aback that for a moment or two he
thought of giving up the attempt to kill him,
but firing a second ball into him behind the
shoulder he put an end at once to the poor
brute's sufferings.
The badger, as I have said, is becoming
very scarce in England, and is decreasing in
numbers in France and other countries as
well. There are, however, several English
and Welsh counties where in woodlands he
still is to be found in considerable numbers,
and some districts where they are common
enough. The badger is fairly plentiful in
many parts of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset,
Somerset, Hants, and Gloucestershire, along
the Welsh border, and in Mid and South
Wales. It is to be found also in Sussex,
Wilts, occasionally in Surrey and Kent, and
here and there through the Midland and
home counties. It is becoming rare in the
north of England, but still lingers in the
North Riding of Yorkshire, chiefly in the
districts of the hills and moors between
39
THE BADGER
Scarborough and York. In Lincolnshire it
is to be found in places; it is extinct in
Durham, and practically so in Northumber-
land, where within fifty years it was common
enough.
A Northumberland gamekeeper of my
father's has told me he knew it in the Kyloe
Craggs and the Ho wick Woods, and remem-
bered his father taking him to see their dog
tried at a badger near Belford. In none of
these places are they to be found now. In my
own district of Cleveland they were in 1874 all
but extinct. I remember as a boy two were
caught in our neighbourhood, one in Kildale
and one at Ayton ; but in 1874 I had three
young badgers sent me from Cornwall, dug
out by one of my uncles, and these I turned
out in my father's coverts, and secured for
them the keeper's protection. Since then
they have, with a few later introductions,
held their own, and a few years ago I knew
of nine badger " sets " in the vicinity, and
some five on our own ground ; but I regret
that the hands of neighbours are against
them.
40
THE BADGER
In Scotland the badger is now rare. In
the north-eastern counties, where till recently
he was to be met with in every wild
woodland and forest district, he has entirely
vanished. In Ross-shire and in the west
he is occasionally found in places where the
wild cat and marten are making their last
stand against the keeper and his extermin-
ating engine, the steel trap. In Ireland
the badger is still found in the Wild West.
I have come upon him in Connemara, near
the Killery harbour, and have heard of him
in Kerry and other counties.
As to the distribution of the badger in
Ireland I quote the following interesting
letters from the Field :
" ' Lepus Hibernicus' may be glad to
know that the badger is still fairly common in
the neighbourhood of Clonmel. The country
people, who know them better under the
name of 'earth-dogs,' in distinction to 'water-
dogs,' or otters, not unfrequently catch them
in one way or another, and offer them for
sale. Fortunately for the badger the demand
is extremely limited." Badger (Clonmel).
41
THE BADGER
" Permit me to coincide with ' Lepus Hiber-
nicus ' respecting the plentifulness of the
badger in Ireland. Some years since I was
on a large estate in Co. Clare, and badgers
were abundant on the domain and the adjoin-
ing property ; I also found them numerous
in the wilds of Galway. I have found and
killed them in many parts of England and
Wales, but have seen and trapped far more
in the west of Ireland." J. J. M. ''Your
correspondent, ' Lepus Hibernicus,' in the
Field of November 5, mentions that badgers
are by no means uncommon in Ireland. I
am in the west of Cornwall, and there are
any amount here, a great deal too plentiful
to please me, as I am sure they do a lot
of harm to rabbits and game. I found the
parts of a fowl in a field, evidently killed by
a badger, as there was a trail not a foot
away, and also a hole scratched, which could
be the work of none other than a badger. I
had two very big ones brought to me alive
last week. They were caught by setting a
noose of thin rope in their run. I should
like to know a good way to exterminate
42
THE BADGER
them, as, though I shoot over a great deal
of ground, I have never seen one out in
daytime, but their trail is every where. "-
H. J. W. " The badger is by no means
rare in the west of Clare, where I have
trapped several." A. H. G. " I beg to in-
form ' Lepus Hibernicus' that badgers are
by no means scarce in this place." A. R.
Warren, Warren's Court, Lisarda, Cork.
" The badger in this part of the. Co. Cork is
certainly not rare Owen, Sheehy, Coosane,
and Goulacullen mountains, with the adjoin-
ing ranges, afford shelter to a goodly number.
Farm hands occasionally capture unwary
ones, and offer them for sale as pets, or to
test the mettle of the national terrier, or to
be converted into bacon. A badger's ham
is often seen suspended from the rafter of a
farmer's kitchen." J. Wagner (Dunmanway,
Co. Cork).
The counties in which I have had most
acquaintance with the badger have been
Radnorshire, Yorkshire, Herefordshire, Glou-
cestershire, and Cornwall, but perhaps most
of my experience has been gained in the
43
THE BADGER
last-named county, as far as digging for him
is concerned ; whilst it is at home in Cleve-
land that I have watched him for nearly
twenty years, and gained some knowledge
of his mode of life and habits. I am not
sure whether there are not a few still left
in the Cheviots and the districts of the
Upper Tyne and Tweed. Up till about
1850 they were to be found on the Cleveland
hills, or rather on their wooded sides and in
the "gills." The last place where I heard
of them being hunted was in the ravine and
woods of Kilton.
A badger's earth or warren is properly and
generally called a "set" or "cete." They
vary in respect of size, number of entrances,
depth of galleries, and choice of site almost
as much as rabbit-holes. Sometimes badgers
will find sufficient room in rocks to make a
home, and it is extraordinary the excavations
they occasionally make in apparently solid
rock. Usually, however, they select some
softer material in which to make their under-
ground passages and chambers. They will
choose a quiet hillside away from man's
44
THE BADGER
habitation, amongst the whin bushes, or in
the woods near a stream or small runner of
water. Such a "set," if long established,
will penetrate through earth, clay, and sub-
soil, to some stratum of shale, or sand, or
loose rock. Some of the galleries and
chambers will be at a great distance from
the surface, and some at an enormous depth.
When a new earth is made I have always
found the badger appropriate the holes of
rabbits, and proceed to excavate, enlarge,
and open them out. This operation of open-
ing a new earth takes place constantly in
the spring-time, great masses of material be-
ing thrown out ; but as often as not the new
house is abandoned before completed, and the
subsequent labours of the family are devoted
to repairing, enlarging, and making new
front or back doors to the old place. In
Cornwall I once tried my hand with my
brother, some strong Cornishmen, and a
team of terriers, at a very innocent-looking
badger " set " situated in a level field. There
were but three holes, and these not very far
apart. The farmer told us that there had
45
THE BADGER
been badgers there all his life, and no one
had ever been able to dig one out. This
rather stimulated us than otherwise, and we
had in the course of a few hours dug a
trench some six feet deep, and were nearing
the sounds of the subterranean conflict, which
had been sustained by the terriers, when
suddenly we found that we were above the
sound, and we sank a shaft down three feet
from the bottom of our trench, to find gal-
leries and chambers in all directions. The
battle had by this time moved, and we were
in despair at the prospect of following on
the level with a depth of nine feet of surface
soil to be lifted in every direction we turned.
I was listening at the bottom of the trench,
having penetrated to the third storey of this
underground barrack, when I distinctly heard
the " bump-bump " of the badger below me.
My companions came down and listened too,
and there was not the slightest doubt that
there was a fourth storey and labyrinth of
passages some three or four feet below us,
and for anything we knew another beyond.
The day was far spent, the task was im-
4 6
THE BADGER
possible, and the rest, of our time was de-
voted to getting the terriers out, and making
as good a retreat as we could before the
victorious enemy.
I should think this " set " was hundreds
of years old, and some of the passages, the
farmer told us, were a hundred yards long!
As a rule a badger's hole descends rapidly
at first, and then may branch into any num-
ber of by-ways and subterranean galleries.
Whichever route you follow, however, you
invariably come to a chamber or " oven,"
which is generally a sort of vaulted hall,
where four ways meet, and which is, or has
been, the living-room of the family at some
previous time. Where there is an old-estab-
lished " set " it is difficult to drive the badgers
permanently away from it. They may leave
it for a while from fancy, or because of dis-
turbance, but they will certainly return.
The badger and his wife have a regular
spring cleaning after the winter is over, and
about March and April a cart-load of winter
bedding, rubbish, earth, and sweepings will
be thrown in a few nights outside the front
47
THE BADGER
door. There is generally the old bedding
left in one or two of the big chambers for
the lady who is to be brought to bed in
February, March, or April ; and there is
another turn-out after this interesting event
has been accomplished. About the middle
of June, in July and August, and as late
as October and November, an extraordinary
amount of fresh bedding will be taken in.
On summer evenings I have watched the
badgers at work, but regret that I cannot
substantiate the following description :
" Badgers when they Earth, after by digging
they have entred a good depth, for the
clearing of the Earth out, one of them falleth
on the back, and the other layeth Earth on
the belly, and so taking his hinder feet in the
mouth draweth the Belly-laden Badger out
of the Hole or Cave ; and having disburdened
herself, re-enters and doth the like till all be
finished."
No, this is not how it is done, though it
is a curious sight to see the real thing. The
badger will come out, take a look round, and
sit awhile close to the mouth of the hole.
48
THE BADGER
He will then shuffle about and get further
from the hole. You will watch him descend
into some bracken-covered hollow, and will
see nothing more of him for awhile. Then
you will hear him gently pushing and shoving
and grunting, and know that he is very busy
over something. He will reappear bumping
along backwards, a heap of bracken and of
grass or old straw, left from a pheasant feed,
under his belly, and encircled by his arms
and fore-feet. He will continue this most
undignified and curious mode of retrogression
to the earth, and will disappear tail first
down his hole, still hugging and tugging at
his burden.
"It is very pleasant to behold them when
they gather materials for their Couch, as
straw, leaves, moss, and such-like ; for with
their Feet and their Head they will wrap
as much together as a man will carry under
his arm, and will make shift to get into
their Cells and Couches" (The Gentleman s
Recreation}.
I have not seen a badger make more than
two such excursions by daylight, but have
49 E
THE BADGER
no doubt that after dark a considerable
number of such journeys may be accom-
plished. For weeks together, on any morn-
ing, you may see the litter of bracken and
grass strewing the way to his home and
down the various entrances.
And now let me again, with all possible
respect, put some of our scientific friends
right. It is not often that an amateur can ;
but a man who is not able to tell you every-
thing, as these learned men do, about every
living creature, may from a country life and
experience be able to correct some errors
in respect of one animal at least. M.
Buffon, the immortal and wonderful natural
historian, tells us that the badger is a solitary
animal. This is the reverse of truth ; he is
less solitary than the fox. He is fond of
company ; he is monogamous, and clings
closely and faithfully to his own wife. With
badgers, as with the human race, the sexes
are not precisely equal in numbers, and often,
from the force of circumstances, a badger
has to remain a celibate, but he is not a
bachelor by choice. He may become a
5
THE BADGER
widower, but in either case he will travel
far to seek a partner to share his shelter
and his lot. It is not altogether rare to find
an old solitary dog badger, who has loved
and lost, or taken in late age to a hermit's
cell ; but he, as often as not, when he has
failed to secure the companionship of the
gentler sex, has found some other male to
share his home, when they can live comfort-
ably en garfon.
Nor do the married pair shun the society
of their kind. I have often seen large badger
" sets " almost as full of badgers as a warren
is of rabbits. One evening, near my house,
I waited an hour of midge-plagued time to
watch the badgers come out from a small
"set," and was rewarded by seeing a pro-
cession of seven full-grown badgers emerge
from a single hole, and I had them all in
full view for something like twenty minutes.
As this was in July they could hardly be one
family. They were every one more than a
year old, and a badger's family is usually
two in number, sometimes three, and never
more than four ; and this last is exceedingly
THE BADGER
rare in my experience. In no sense, there-
fore, is the badger solitary. Indeed I have
actually known myself several instances of
a badger and fox living in apparent amity
in the same earth, whilst I hardly ever saw a
badger ''earth" that was not either itself or
the immediate vicinity tenanted by rabbits.
As to the consistency of any friendship that
exists between badgers and foxes and rabbits,
I shall have more to say later on. I have,
however, taken a badger and rabbit out of
the same hole lying side by side. The
badger is said to be the protector of the
rabbit. He does not altogether deserve
this title, and the rabbit enjoys the immunity
in a badger's earth chiefly from the fact that
the badger cannot follow it in the smaller
holes without digging, an effort which in
his estimation is, as a rule, not worth the
candle.
Buffon dwells on the cleanliness of the
badger. He certainly is not the stinking
animal he is accused of being. His house
and himself are as a rule bright and cleanly
looking, and it is only when in confinement,
5 2
THE BADGER
and deprived of the sanitary arrangements
to which he is accustomed, that he becomes
offensive. Writers are not correct in saying
that he never deposits his dung in his earth,
but as a rule he does not, and his habit is
to go some little distance from his home, dig
a hole, and there leave his excrement. He
will use the same hole for a few days, and
then cover it up with earth and make a new
one. There is a smell about a badger
"earth," but it is not disagreeable, and no-
thing like so rank and strong as that of a
fox's. He is, however, often troubled with
lice and ticks, so that it is desirable when
your dogs have been to ground carefully to
wash them. But in this respect a badger is
not worse than sheep and goats, and with
such a coat as he has it is no wonder that
it is sometimes tenanted. The same dis-
tinguished authority states that the badger
produces its young in summer, but I have
never known this happen. March is the
usual month, and the rule is not earlier than
February nor later than April. A naturalist
at Cambridge told me that he knew of a
53
THE BADGER
badger bitch that was many months in con-
finement (I think he said eighteen months),
and gave birth to cubs but I was not con-
vinced of the accuracy of his statement that
she had never had access to one of her kind.
It is only fair to mention that Vyner, in his
Notitia Venatica, states that "It is a fact
perhaps not generally known, nevertheless
curious, that badgers go twelve months with
young. This fact I learned from a neigh-
bour of mine in Warwickshire, who some
years ago dug out in the spring a sow badger.
She was confined in an outhouse for twelve
months, at about which period she produced
one young one. During her confinement it
was impossible for her to have been visited
by a male."
That an animal of this size should go with
young for such a period is so extraordinary,
and so great an exception to the ordinary
provisions of nature, that the theory requires
much greater support than mere hearsay
evidence. If it were a fact, or if it were
the rule, the evidence to support the theory
of twelve months' gestation should be over-
54
THE BADGER
whelming, considering the number of badgers
that are in confinement. I have had many
in confinement for long periods, and have
never known them to give any evidence in
support of this theory. I have kept a pair
for a long period, but, like many other wild
animals in confinement, they never bred.
All sorts of theories exist as to the period
of gestation in badgers, but I think I shall
be very near the mark when I say that they
go with young about nine weeks, and I con-
ceive that the mistake made by those who
have thought that they go over a year is
due to the fact, which I have noticed, that
a pair of badgers do not breed every year.
I cannot decide whether there is any precise
rule, but am inclined to think that they breed
once every two years. There are so many
accounts of single badgers kept in confinement
bringing forth young after a much longer
period of gestation that it appears possible
that the female has the power known to be
possessed by the Roe-deer doe of postponing
the operation of parturition for a considerable
time.
55
THE BADGER
The badger is not by nature a ferocious
animal, though the female will repel with
the greatest savagery any approach when
she has young, but so will a hen with
chickens. The temperament of the badger
is a gentle, shrinking one. No animal pre-
fers a more quiet life, loving a warm bed
in a dry dark corner of earth or rocks. He
loves to sleep and meditate in peace for the
greater part of the twenty-four hours. He
lies not far within his entrance hall during
the spring and summer, and on a hot day
he will sometimes come to the mouth of his
hole. In the evening, in June or July, he
will come outside, sit looking into the wood
or shuffle round the bushes, stretch himself
against the tree-stems, or have a clumsy
romp with his wife and little ones ; and when
the daylight dies he will hurry off, rushing
through the covert for his nightly ramble.
In the summer months he will travel as far
as six miles from home, but he is in bed
again an hour before sunrise.
It is only at this time of the year that he
can be hunted above ground. This can be
56
THE BADGER
done with a few beagles or harriers on a moon-
light night, when, finding him in the open,
they will give a merry chase and fine cry,
and a run of several miles without a check.
If his earths are stopped, and he finds no
other refuge, he will be brought to bay. In
some districts I have known sacks put into
the mouths of the most used holes of a set,
the open end of each sack having a running
noose pegged into the ground, thus providing
an astonishing reception on his return as he
charges in, disturbed or pursued in his mid-
night ramble. By this means he is taken
alive and unhurt, being bagged and secured
in his attempt to enter. At other times of
the year, when the days are short and the
nights longer, he comes out later in the
evening, waits for a moment at the mouth
of his earth, takes a preliminary sniff round,
and then rushes off at the top speed into the
covert.
The badger is easily domesticated if
brought up by hand, and proves an inter-
esting and charming companion. I had at
one time two that I could do anything with,
57
THE BADGER
and which followed me so closely that they
would bump against my boots each step I
took, and come and snuggle in under my
coat when I sat down. I was very much
attached to them, but having to leave for
the London season, I came home after a
prolonged absence to find that they had re-
verted to their natural disposition, and had
forgotten him who had been a foster-parent
to them. As I could not fondle them with-
out a pair of hedging-gloves on, and they
no longer walked at my heel, I made them
a home in the woods, where the thought of
their happiness has helped me to bear my
loss.
Many interesting stones are told of tame
badgers. Here is one taken from the Field:
" A few months ago, a farmer in the Cots-
wolds unearthed a badger and one youngster
about two months old, which were sent to
Mr. Barry Burge, Northleach, who only kept
the former a few weeks, when she died.
The orphan was petted very much by its
owner. In a short time it would follow Mr.
Burge through the fields and streets, and
58
THE BADGER
answer to the call like a clog. It is an
amusing- sight to see the badger along with
its master riding a bicycle. A short time
ago Mr. Burge had a fox cub, which he
has succeeded in taming. This fox has
taken a great fancy to an Irish terrier, with
which she plays continually. The badger,
which is now about seven months old, is
loose about the house at times, but generally
spends most of its time in company with
the fox, to which it is greatly attached, all
sleeping snugly together." G. W. Duckett,
Northleach, R.S.O., Gloucestershire.
M. le Masson gives a pretty account of
his tame badger, which, though it loses much
in translation, I give in English. " I brought
up and kept for more than two years a
female badger, which died at last from obe-
sity. She had been taken from her mother
when only eight days old and suckled by
a Normandy bitch, which had already reared
me some wolf whelps. ' Grisette,' as she
was named, was, like all her kind, omnivorous;
meat, beetles, fruits, certain kinds of vege-
tables, in fact, all and everything was welcome
59
THE BADGER
to her healthy appetite. When out walking
in the country, where she always readily
followed me, she would unearth rats, moles,
and young rabbits, which she could scent at
the bottom of their holes. In spite of her
thorough domesticity, I never succeeded in
overcoming her antipathy to dogs, and more
especially to cats, which she chased most
viciously did they dare to enter the kitchen
where she reigned as queen ; and where,
such was her sensitiveness to cold, she had
made her bed against the wall in the chimney
corner. Here in winter, buried in her furs,
she slept curled up for whole days together.
But which of us is without a fault ? A little
greedy without being actually voracious,
sweet Grisette sometimes ventured on to the
stone-work of the cooking-stove, and from
there was able to discover from which of
the saucepans was exhaled the most savoury
odour, and never did she make a mistake on
that score ! "
Du Fouilloux states in his Venerie : "Je
ay veu aux blereaux prendre deuant moy
les petis cochons de laict, lesquelz ilz tray-
do
THE BADGER
noient tout vifz en leur terrier. C'est vne
chose certaine qu'ilz en sont plus friandz
que de toutes autres chairs : car si on passe
vn carnage de porceau par dessus leurs
terriers, ilz ne faudront iamais de sorter
pour y aller."
The badger is credited with a special love
for pork. I have seen a statement in an old
volume of the Gentleman s Recreation, in
which the writer refers to the taste of the
badger for pork. " They love Hog's-flesh
above any other ; for take but a piece of
Pork and train it over a badger's Burrow, if
he be within, you shall quickly see him
appear without."
Badgers are omnivorous. In their wild
state their food is principally roots and insects
they are especially fond of beetles and such
creatures as are to be found just below the
surface of the ground, or under the decaying
dung of cattle. The natural history books
say they eat frogs. This may be true, but I
have not observed it. I have tried badgers
in confinement with all sorts of insects and
grubs, but I never could get them to touch
61
THE BADGER
slugs or worms. They are carnivorous, and
eat mice, rats, voles, and moles. They will
take a rabbit out of a trap, turn it inside out,
and eat all the meat, leaving the skin behind,
turned neatly with the fur inside. They are
also fond of very young rabbits, and will dig
a shaft through several feet of solid earth
direct on to the nest. But when this has
been stated, nearly all has been said with
regard to their propensity to damage in game
coverts. I am supported by other observers
in this opinion ; for instance, a recent writer
in the Field who says : "In reply to E. T.
D'Egmont's inquiry about catching badgers,
I have never found them do much harm to
the nests of winged game ; but they are
death on rabbits, and much resemble a fox in
finding a young one appetizing. Their skins
would make good waistcoats, but, apart from
that, I would not destroy them upon any
property of my own, because they do so
much more good than harm in divers ways.
We have a small property in my family,
where foxes and badgers lie up together in
close proximity to a rabbit warren, upon the
62
THE BADGER
inhabitants of which they feed. It is a spot
practically unknown to the outward gaze of
man, as it is difficult of access ; and I should
fancy that any one attempting to attack their
stronghold would meet with a stubborn
resistance. Badgers mostly go seeking for
food during the night-time. Where they
abound, one occasionally meets them walk-
ing quietly along a path, with their snout
low down, and occasionally giving a kind
of grunt like a mongoose. They are very
fond of honey. A bag pegged back over
the entrance to their holes is a good way of
catching them."
They do not hunt for rabbits or game like
a fox or cat, and though there are undoubt-
edly instances of their taking partridge and
pheasant eggs, in my experience I have
never known it done by those around me, nor
from other places where they have ample
opportunity of doing so. I have known a
pheasant rear a young brood on an earth
tenanted by badgers ; but, curiously enough,
I have known a similar case on a fox's earth,
containing a vixen and cubs, and I cannot
63
THE BADGER
defend the general character of a fox in
regard to game. Still it may be taken that
a badger, though occasionally eating rabbits
and rarely eggs, does not hunt for game,
ground or feathered, or do a hundredth part
of the damage done by a fox or a cat. There
have always been more rabbits, hares, and
pheasants in a hollow near my house, where
there is a large colony of badgers, than in
any other part of the coverts. The badger
has a special weakness for wild honey, and
the grubs of wasps and humble bees. The
wildest and most unconciliatory badgers I
have ever had in confinement would come
out and eat a wasp's nest, and they will hunt
every bank and hedgerow in July and August,
routing out every wasp's and hornet's nest in
the country-side. A keeper told me that
upon one occasion, when he was walking
along the covert edges in summer-time about
nine o'clock in the evening, his attention was
arrested by a curious chapping, champing
noise, and looking over the fence he saw an
old badger with his head in a huge wasp's
nest hanging in a bramble bush, and he was
6 4
THE BADGER
crunching up and eating with the greatest
gusto the wasps and grubs, quite undeterred
by the thousand angry insects that covered
his head and body. In truth, I must admit
that while he is thus useful, he has been
known to enter a garden and upset the hives
and purloin the honey, being as fond of it as
his larger cousins, the bears.
I must also bring another charge against
him. Let me introduce this painful subject
by giving the following correspondence from
the Field newspaper :
" Wilfred writes ' I shall be obliged if
you will allow me to ask your readers whether
they have known old badgers to kill fox
cubs. Last year our M.F. H. gave a neigh-
bouring keeper a litter of cubs. He put them
into a natural empty fox-earth, and kept them
shut in until they had got fairly on their
feed, and were quite at home. When he
opened the earth, and allowed them to
come out, they played about, and all went
well for two or three days, when he found
one at a little distance from the mouth of
the earth dead, with its skull smashed in,
65 F
THE BADGER
and very much bitten about the head and
neck. He lost the lot in the same way in
a few days. He thought an old badger
or fox killed his cubs. About this time I
got five cubs, and put them into an empty
artificial fox-earth. All went well with
them for some time after they played out,
when the keeper reported finding one about
twenty yards from the earth dead, and
killed after the same fashion as my neigh-
bour's cubs, and I too lost mine. In the
same artificial earth I had a natural litter this
season, and the cubs played out well ; but on
the keeper telling me he did not think they
were there now, I went to examine the earth,
found the foxes gone, and the earth occupied
by an old badger. I had a litter of fox cubs
in the deer park here, where I live, and all
went well with them until ten days ago, when
one was picked up dead, killed in the same
manner as those last year, and another was
found dead yesterday. I feel quite certain
myself that they were killed by an old badger
or an old fox, for I am sure if killed by dogs
they would not smash the skull and neck. I
66
THE BADGER
shall be glad if any one can enlighten me on
this subject.' "
In reply to " Wilfred " there were several
letters, among which were the following :
" Sir, Undoubtedly; every one that they
can get near, and more especially hand-
reared cubs that have not got the old foxes
to protect them. I was first told this by
old Jem Hills, the well-known huntsman of
the Heythrop, in his latter years ; and sub-
sequently I had positive proof of what he
said. On one occasion a man brought a fine
half-grown cub to my house which he had
picked up dead in the road he came along.
It was bitten most severely through and
behind the shoulder, and I at once remarked
to a friend that was with me, ' That is the
work of a badger.' On going down to an
earth where I knew there was a natural litter,
we found tracks of a badger all about the
place, as if he had been hunting the cubs.
Having at the time eight cubs that I was
hand-rearing in an artificial drain, I thought
it was high time to look after them, for
67
THE BADGER
though regularly fed, I did not always watch
to see whether they all came to feed. How-
ever, I did so that evening, and only two
came, and these looked very wild and scared.
I then searched the plantation, and picked up
four of my cubs killed quite recently, and
bitten in the same savage way. A few weeks
after we killed a big boar badger in the
drain. Several years later, I was again rear-
ing some hand-bred cubs, and everything
went well until they were a good size,
when one morning I found one of them
killed, evidently by a badger ; and I even-
tually took four more of them, and the others
were all driven away. This badger beat
me for some little time, but I got him at
last. Though old badgers and foxes are often
found in the same earth, more frequently
when one of the latter has been run to
ground by hounds, yet, as a rule, they
give each other wide berths. If your cor-
respondent ' Wilfred ' wishes to save his
cubs, let him kill every badger as soon as
possible."
68
THE BADGER
" Sir, Replying to ' Wilfred's ' question,
' Do badgers kill fox cubs ? ' I cannot say
they do, because there are no badgers in this
district ; but having at different times had
young foxes killed in the way he describes,
namely, bitten in the head, I can assure
him that it is done by an old dog fox.
Should he wish for further information, I
refer him to Mr. John Douglas, Royal Hotel,
Pudding Chare, Newcastle-on-Tyne, who will
tell him of the experience he gained when at
Clumber, under the Duke of Newcastle."
" Sir, I may tell ' Wilfred ' that I have
never known old badgers kill fox cubs, though
I have studied the habits of both for nearly
forty years. No doubt an old vixen, with no
cubs of her own, killed his ; the dog fox will
not do this. Indeed, he will cater for all the
cubs of his own get, but a strange vixen is
very apt to kill any cubs which have no
mother of their own. I have known a terrier
bitch kill a litter of foxhound puppies, and one
of my Irish terriers will kill puppies if she
has the chance. As to the ' natural ' litter
69
THE BADGER
which 'Wilfred' found gone, they had merely
been shifted by the vixen ; as soon as the
cubs get able to travel they are always shifted.
Last year I had two tame wild ducks sitting in
a hedge. A badger passed regularly within
a yard of them every night, but they were
undisturbed. This year a fox took one of
them just before it hatched. I was sorry to
read the other day in the Field an account of
two old and four cub badgers having been
dug out in Gloucestershire. There is surely
no sport in this, and the badgers are destitute
of grease now, whereas at Michaelmas they
are fat enough to provide grease for all the
rheumatic people in the parish. I like to
catch one with my terriers when the harvest
moon shines. Sometimes I get up in a con-
venient tree near the earth and watch the
badgers feeding on the crazy roots. How
fond they are of the wild bees' honey, and
also of wasps' nests. Let me advise
' Wilfred ' to read the exhaustive and inter-
esting account given in a letter to the Times
(October 24, 1877), and quoted in Cassell's
Natural History, vol. ii. It thus concludes
70
THE BADGER
' The badgers and the foxes are not unfriendly,
and last spring a litter of cubs was brought
forth very near the badgers ; but their mother
removed them after they had grown familiar,
as she probably thought they were showing
themselves more than was prudent.' Mr.
Ellis of Loughborough was the author of
the letter, and he had rare opportunities of
studying the habits of badgers."
I am loth to do it, but wishing to be an
impartial historian, am compelled to state
that the badger is capable of vulpicide. As
a rule he can put up with an occasional
lodger of the fox family, and live happily
with him, and from his superior qualities as
an architect of subterranean dwellings, he is
on the whole an encourager of foxes. He
often gives up his spacious apartments to a
vixen in the spring, and submits to eviction.
A fox will often take possession of a badger's
earth, new or old ; and in order to persuade
foxes to take to a particular covert, no surer
method can be pursued than to get badgers
to make earths when they are required. But
71
THE BADGER
even a badger's patience can be exhausted,
as the following history of my own experi-
ence will show. I would premise, however,
that I do not credit the oft-repeated story
that the fox gets rid of the badger by leaving
his evacuations in the badger's earth. Being
the less and weaker animal, all a fox does is
allowed on sufferance. My suspicions of a
badger's capability to wage war on foxes
were first aroused some years ago. The
badgers had made a fine double set of earths
on the north side, of a hill in a neighbouring
larch wood, where no effort on my part to
get foxes to breed and stay had succeeded.
No sooner, however, was a colony of badgers
established than foxes haunted the holes and
covert. In a succession of years there was
as certain to be a litter of fox cubs in the
badger earth as a sunrise on the morrow.
What happened each spring was that the
foxes and badgers frequented both sets
indiscriminately till about March. When the
vixen lay in the badgers abandoned the set
of holes where she was, and restricted them-
selves to the other set some twenty yards
72
THE BADGER
distant. Year after year the fox cubs pros-
pered and grew up, till one summer the keeper
found a fox cub in a field with his head bitten
in two and terribly worried. I did not know
how to account for it. I watched the vixen
and the other cubs one evening to see that
they were all right, and saw them, but found
they had left the earth and were in the
covert. For two years all went well and the
foxes were unmolested, and then occurred
something that gave me a clue to the death
of the cub three years before Two vixens lay
in at the badgers' earth, and brought up their
families of seven and four respectively, till
they were about one-third grown. There
were then to my knowledge at least four
badgers and twelve foxes in these two earths.
On one or two occasions the stillness of the
night was broken by the veriest pandemonium
at the earth, but still I did not think much
of it. At the end of the hunting season, at
the end of April, when the cubs were seven
or eight weeks old, and a fortnight after the
hounds had been through the coverts, I found
the largest and finest of the vixens dead, and
73
THE BADGER
thought that, in spite of the earths being open,
she must have been chopped by the hounds.
A post-mortem examination, as well as the
improbability of a vixen with cubs being out
in the early part of the day, convinced me
that she had not been killed by hounds.
She seemed to have been badly bitten through
the legs and thighs but not on the body.
From this time the other vixen and all the
cubs left the badgers' earths and remained in
the covert. It was on this occasion that an
attempt to find out how many badgers there
were in these earths was rewarded by seeing
seven full-grown badgers emerge from a
single hole. It was rough, no doubt, that
the badgers should be invaded by two large
families of smelling foxes, and no doubt their
patience had become exhausted. Still I
could not tolerate this kind of behaviour, and
so I had a dig at them, took two old ones out,
and transported them to Scotland. The
following year there was peace and fox cubs
again. The year after, however, the vixen
and her cubs took off into the covert very
early after another bit of Bank Holiday
74
THE BADGER
business, at a time of night when all respect-
able people were quietly in bed. And yet all
through the year foxes are in the earth, and
this spring, as heretofore, a litter of cubs
has been raised, but removed to another
earth at a safe distance from the badgers. I
have never heard of badgers taking the offen -
sive against foxes ; they will never molest a
fox or vixen unless their earth is invaded, and
in my case if I had had no badgers in this
covert I should have had no foxes ; and whilst
it is annoying that the fox cubs and vixen
should be driven out, and perhaps occasionally
killed, the drawback is slight when it is
considered that as long as there are bad-
gers there will be a litter of cubs, which nine
times out of ten will get safely off.
There are every now and then albino bad-
gers reported, but I have never seen one
alive. I think, however, they are more
subject to albinism than most animals. I
clo not know of a case of melanism.
" White Badger at Overton, Hants.
While digging for badgers on April 30, we
came across two dog badgers in the same
75
THE BADGER
earth, one of which was quite white, the
colour of a white ferret, with pink eyes.
Unfortunately, the terriers punished him so
much he had to be destroyed. I have helped
to dig out a great many of these animals, but
never saw nor heard of a white one before."
T. P.
PART III
THERE are several methods by which the
badger can be taken alive, or killed, with
ease. I am familiar with several successful
ways of trapping him. The reader, if he is
not aware of these, must not expect me to
enlighten him, as my object in writing is to
arouse an interest in his preservation, not to
facilitate his destruction. It may be as well to
state, however, that the inhuman engine, the
steel trap (by which so many of the birds and
beasts that frequented the wild woods of
England and Scotland have been extermin-
ated) is an instrument that arouses the
suspicion of a badger at once, and he is as
clever in avoiding it as an old-fashioned rat.
The badger if caught in a steel trap will
frequently bite his leg or foot clean off. In
77
THE BADGER
my opinion there are two legitimate methods
of hunting the badger. First, that of a
straight-forward attack on his fortress; and
should it be an old-established earth, it may
be the end of the longest day will not see
the battle ended. There are, of course,
the fortunes of war a lucky engagement,
a wrong turn on the part of the defender,
a successful trench quickly cutting off his
retreat which may deliver him unexpectedly
into your hands ; or the enemy may outwit
you altogether, conducting a masterful re-
treat, with gallant sorties on the dogs, and
by continually changing his front drive you
to abandon works, trenches, and operations
that have cost great labour and time ; thus
you may be left with a tired and wounded
pack of terriers, exhausted sappers, and the
badger, having blocked and barricaded his
retreat with soil, stones, and sand, is lost.
The war thus made is an equal one : you
attack him on his own ground in his fortress
where he is acquainted with every passage,
gallery, and casement ; he is armed to the
teeth and armour-plated, and can drive a road
78
THE BADGER
forward, downward, or upward with extra-
ordinary rapidity. It is true you may have
many terriers, but he has an advantage over
your forces. Only one of your dogs can
engage at a time, and the badger has the
advantage of weight, size, knowledge of the
ground, and familiarity with the dark in fact,
in every respect except those of courage and
endurance, which in some terriers may equal
his own. The other method, less sure,
depends on taking the badger off his guard,
and is more in the character of an ambuscade
under cover of night. When the badgers
are away from home you block up their
earths, placing sacks with running nooses in
the mouth, in the most frequented holes.
Station one of your party near the "set," and
you may either take a small pack of hounds
and draw the country for a few miles round,
and hunt him like a fox, getting a run across
country and a fine cry ; or you may beat the
neighbouring coverts with men and dogs
of any description that are trained to hunt
the badger.
In the following, taken from an article
79
THE BADGER
which appeared in a newspaper, there is a
good account of night hunting.
" Owing to his shy and retiring habits,
rather than to the scarcity of the animal,
probably less is known about the badger than
about any wild animal left in England at the
present time. There is a prevalent notion
that the badger is exceedingly rare, and also
that he is harmless ; neither of these ideas is
quite correct. In the west especially the
badger is fairly common, but escapes notice
owing to his retiring disposition. Whether
he does harm to feathered game or not is a
moot point, but his tracks have been distinctly
noticed round plundered nests ; it is certain,
however, that he does great damage to
ground game by digging out ' stops ' of
young rabbits in the spring and summer.
"When hunted after the fashion generally
adopted in the west, he affords excellent
sport to those who are prepared to face a
long tramp and the loss of some of their
night's rest. The prosaic way of digging
them out of the earth involves much labour,
and has in it no element of sport ; while
80
THE BADGER
attempting to catch badgers in traps is about
as feasible as trying to catch birds by putting
salt on their tails. Driving them into sacks
fixed in the earth is unsatisfactory, as a good
game dog is necessary to press the badger
hard, or he will turn from the earth and seek
shelter elsewhere ; while, if you have a good
dog, the sacks are unnecessary except for the
reception of the badger when caught by the
dog.
" The paraphernalia of the chase are
simple, namely, a good dog, a pair of badger-
tongs, and a sack. A really good dog is
very difficult to obtain ; the favourite kind is
a cross-bred bull-terrier, about forty pounds
in weight; pure-bred bull-terriers, for some
reason or other, do not seem to give satis-
faction. The ( tongs ' have wooden handles,
and iron heads with blunt teeth for grasping
the badger when held by the dog. For a
successful hunt it is necessary to observe
which way the badger travels from the
earth. A favourite spot is the slope of a hill,
or high-lying fields, where they may be easily
tracked by the ' roots,' i. e. small holes
81 G
THE BADGER
which they scratch in the ground in search
of beetles and roots of various kinds. They
rarely descend into low-lying meadows, ex-
cept to drink. Choose a starlight night with
a slight breeze blowing, and approach the
earth up the wind. Do not hurry your dog ;
if he knows his work, he will range freely,
but he often takes a long time to puzzle out
the track. If you miss him, go on slowly in
the direction in which you last saw him, often
stopping to listen.
" ' What was that ? ' The dry sticks crack
in a hedge far below you. ' Hark ! two
sharp eager barks ; what does it mean ? '
Why, that Grip is wheeling out in a half-
circle to gain slightly on the badger, and
then to dash in and get him by the head.
Run now as you never ran before. Head
over heels into a ditch ; never mind, up
and on again the best dog can't hold a
badger for ever. There they are out in the
open, Grip with a tight hold of the badger by
the side of the head, with his legs tucked
back out of harm's way. Grasp him with the
tongs as near the neck as possible. Take off
82
THE BADGER
the dog, some one. Hold the bag. Hoist
our grey-coated friend into the air, and lower
him into the sack ; he weighs at least thirty
pounds. The dog is hardly marked, and you
haven't torn more than three rents in your
nether garments getting through that last
thorn hedge. Altogether, every one agrees
that it was a satisfactory little run.
" The old English sheep-dog I have known
do well for the other method. The badger
when pursued makes straight for home,
blunders headlong into the hole, only to find
that his efforts to get in are closing the mouth
of the sack, that retreat or fighting are alike
in vain, and that he is an imprisoned bagman,
without having struck a blow in self-defence.
It is not uncommon fora badger thus pursued
to stand at bay, when a good dog may keep
him in play, or hold on, till you come up and
secure him. No doubt there is amusement
and excitement in this moonlight chase, and
to some it is preferable to the arduous labour
with pick, spade, axe, and terrier."
To my mind, however, there is something
more interesting and exciting in the long-
83
THE BADGER
sustained conflict and labour of the latter, for
which you require perseverance, wit, patience,
and courage on the part of man and terrier.
The courage and endurance that a good terrier
will display when need requires before such a
foe, will fill his owner's heart with joy and
pride. A good terrier is a veritable treasure ;
the price of a sure, game, and determined
one is far above rubies. Picture what it
means for a small terrier to enter into the
bowels of the earth to find, to cope with, and
for long hours in dust and darkness in the
tortuous maze to keep up an unequal fight
with an enormously superior foe, whose
grunts and clattering teeth add terror to his
charges down the echoing ways. Yet I have
had not a few that, hour after hour, on their
backs or their sides, would lie up to a badger,
keeping him cornered, and continuously give
tongue with no voice to direct them. Should
the badger charge, such a terrier would
rather die than let him leave the corner to
which he has been driven, and will return
fighting and facing his huge opponent, driv-
ing him inch by inch into the cul de sac,
84
THE BADGER
caring neither for bite nor wounds, and
making noise enough to let you know where
the battle rages. It is no part of his duty to
tackle the badger. A good terrier knows
this, and will only resort to his teeth should
the badger attempt to force a passage. If it
comes to close quarters, such a terrier will
draw back his fore-legs under his body, take
the attack full in the face, and trust to seizing
the badger by the neck. A badger when
attacked generally bites upwards, i. e. he
lowers his head and turns the back of his
head downwards. Nothing makes the heart
beat faster than, with head to the earth, to
hear the din of this subterranean warfare
carried along the dark galleries to the day.
You have sent in one of your best terriers ;
he has tried by cajolery and caresses, by
cries, by straining at his chain to be allowed
the honourable distinction of first blood.
You have dispatched him with your blessing,
and he has quickly and silently started on his
journey into the unknown. You listen to
him forcing his passage, drawing himself round
corners, scratching away some accumulation
85
THE BADGER
or fall from the roof, and hear his eager
panting as he winds his foe. Presently you
hear a low sharp bark, then another, then
two or three more, next a bumping, thump-
ing noise ; it is the badger, who has waited
to see who the intruder is, and, rousing
himself, is retreating. The terrier barks no
more, but you can hear the thump-thump of
the badger, followed by the efforts of the dog
to keep up with him. They are now a long
way in, and you can plainly hear the bark
again. Soon the fight draws nearer, and the
terrier's cry comes to your ear with regularity
and clearness ; but the badger is only dis-
puting the way, he has not yet been driven
with his back against the wall. The terrier
redoubles his activity, you can hear him
feinting at the badger, sharp give-and-take,
but no foolish attempt to lay hold. After
ten minutes the badger again retreats, prob-
ably up the hill, and you have to listen on
the surface or at the higher holes of the set
till you can hear them again. At last you
catch a faint sound, they are still moving,
now stationary, now further on ; then they
86
THE BADGER
seem to stay in one place. There is the
steady yap-yap-yap of the dog just distin-
guishable to the ear.
Quick, every hand to work. A trench six
feet deep, or deeper if necessary, must be cut
across the set to cut off the badger from the
passages. With pick, spade, and shovel the
work goes on, while some one listens to
know whether the scene of battle moves.
I f it does, the badger may have found a side
gallery, and gone far enough, or he may
have charged the dog. He may have passed
by a different road beneath your feet in the
trench ; but if the terrier has succeeded in
keeping him face to face and engaged, yet
not driving him so hard as to make him
charge, you may be successful in an hour or
two, and find that your cutting intersects the
passage in which the badger and the terrier
are engaged. If the badger suspects you
are cutting off his only means of escape he
will charge and fight, and the terrier will
sometimes be unable to back fast enough ;
then there will be a meeting of teeth and
jaws, the badger holding the dog through
87
THE BADGER
the head, jaw, or nose. The dog's smothered
cries of anger and pain make you strain every
nerve to get to his relief.
When the badger at last leaves go, the
terrier's turn comes, and now with blood
up he drives back the badger to his end
of the hole with every determination to
keep him there. After two or three turns
like this, if the dog has been in an hour
or two, he will probably come out for a
breath of air for a moment. He should be
immediately taken, fastened up, watered, and
kept in reserve for future contingencies, and
the best terrier for sticking up be sent in
with the utmost haste. If a minute has been
spent in doing this, every moment will have
been used by the badger in barricading the
passage against the dog and burying himself.
This once accomplished, you may as well
whistle for your badger as continue digging,
for he may have got down into some other
gallery, or have buried himself so that neither
dog nor man can find him. Of one thing
you may be sure, that whilst you are speculat-
ing what has become of him, he is digging
THE BADGER
at a prodigious rate, or has already made his
escape by some secret stair.
If, however, you are quick, terrier number
two has interrupted master badger as he
is at work and lets you know. "It's all
right," " Come on," " He's here," " I've
got him," "He's got me," "You beast,"
" Get back," " I'll hold him," and spade
and shovel and pick are hard at work
again. Backs and arms are aching with lift-
ing at high pressure out of the deep trench.
You dig on, blocking the hole as the roof
falls in, but every now and then the shovels
clear it for a moment to give the dog air.
And now the game has shown itself. A
terrible charge down the hole sends out the
terrier ; and the badger, seeing the men at
work, backs again, followed by the dog.
Now all is excitement. Every snap, haunch,
grunt, groan, and yell in the fight is heard.
A favourite's life in the balance ! The prize
in view ! The other terriers are tugging
at their chains, frantic to join the fray, yelling
fit to split their throats. It is maddening
for them to see the dust and commotion
89
THE BADGER
in the trench, to hear the sound of battle
so near, to wind the enemy, to hear the
cry of their fighting and perhaps wounded
companion, and not to be allowed to share in
the glory of the final action. Now is the
time if you have a terrier to enter to see
what he is made of, but there is no time to
waste on education. You are close up to the
badger, he cannot be an arm's-length off.
Draw your dog, the badger will then turn
his tail to you to dig, or he will charge out.
Be ready with the tongs, and a good dog in
case he charges. But if he turns tail get hold
of it with a good grip. A long pull and a
steady pull will draw him out, bouncing,
lunging, and snapping. Now, boys, ready
with the sack ! Dogs off. All want steady
nerves now ; three hands on the sack mouth
to keep it open, and take care of your fingers!
A twirl round and a quick plunge, and the
badger is in the bag. Don't let go his tail
till you have slipped the cord on his hind-leg,
and made the other end of the cord fast to
the bag mouth and to a tree. I have seen
a badger go through a sack like a bullet
90
THE BADGER
through paper, and it is well to make all
as safe as possible.
M. Edmond le Masson, in his book on
hunting fox and badger, severely deprecates
tailing a badger. He denounces the danger
and folly of it, and gives an amusing account
of his falling into a trench at the critical
moment as follows :
" One fine day, or rather one cursed day,
when I was sweating blood and water to
get a monster badger out of his earth, a
venerable patriarch, white with years, who
resisted my aching tired arms and weary
back with all his strength, the earth gave way
and I fell back, rolling over with the animal,
and there I was at the bottom of the abyss
in a veritable pandemonium. Bruised and
breathless, I was conscious enough to know
that I was in very bad company, with four
more badgers, a furious mother and three
young ones, and not so young either but that
one of them was able to tear from me a large
piece of the most indispensable part of my
attire, which placed me in a position of cruel
embarrassment, and obliged me to wait till the
9 1
THE BADGER
shades of night enabled me to get home with
decency. The most humiliating part of the
adventure was that all these cursed brutes,
father, mother, and children, made the most
insolent retreat over my stomach to escape
from their earth, and then took off straight
across country and escaped. From this
moment I have felt a ferocious malice against
all badgers, whether big, middling, or little,
and I never go down into the trench now
without having a Lefaucheux revolver and a
Devisme revolver, a long dagger knife, and a
sharp Toledo colichemarde ! "
But let not ingenuous youth think that to
enjoy the sport all he has to do is to take a
spade and any reputable terrier. He might
as well try, like Dame Partington, to stop
the rising tide with a mop ! Before so serious
an enterprise as a badger digging be under-
taken, the wise man will see to it that all the
materials are ready, and let him be sure that
he has the first necessity the stout heart to
go through with a tough job when once
started. I have, with my brother, Mr. J. A.
Pease, started at 7.30 a.m. from home, worked
92
THE BADGER
a summer's clay with a slight refreshment at
one, handled pick and shovel and spade,
fought the terriers, and gone on through the
afternoon, evening, and a black wet night,
without even a drop of water to slake our
parched throats, deserted by all but one
faithful workman, and on till the grey dawn
of another day, which found us as weary, wet,
and wounded, and as disreputable a looking
company of three men and four terriers as
ever survived a bloody action. At five
o'clock we secured a splendid pair of badgers,
which we bore home on aching backs, fol-
lowed by our gallant little team of draggled
and dirty terriers. On another occasion, it
took my brother and myself, some ten labour-
ers and keepers, and nine terriers, from 10
till 5.30 to take an old 3O-lb. dog bad-
ger, in an earth which had only one hole,
and where it was a case of following straight
into the hill. It is wonderful what can be
done by twelve men with pick, spade, and
shovel in seven hours. On this occasion
we dug a trench ten feet long into the hill,
and then the depth of bearing necessitated
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THE BADGER
our making a drift, or tunnel, which we drove
in thirty feet. The heat and want of air
inside made the work difficult. Candles
would not burn after we had gone about
twenty feet, and the tunnel was so low that
we had to work on our knees and then on
our stomachs. There was a considerable
danger from the roof falling in, but the fight
waged so fiercely that we thought of little
but what was ahead of us. When at last we
got within distance of the badger, he was in
rocky ground, we could mine no further, and
being on a shelf round a corner no terrier
could draw him. As I was the smallest of
the party, it fell to me to try and reach him,
and I crawled up as far as I could, holding a
little bull-terrier on whom I could rely for
protection for my face, and a pair of short
badger tongs. I had indeed a bad quarter of
an hour !
It was stifling, cramped, and pitch dark. I
kept the terrier in front of my head and
gallantly he behaved, though every now and
then the badger's charge, or a fierce encounter,
nearly smothered me with dust and soil,
94
THE BAD;GEIR
against which I could not protect myself, as
I was powerless to retreat, there being only
room to lie flat on the ground. The man
behind me was in the same position, tight
hold of my ankles, and the man again behind
him, and the rest of the force made a human
chain, which on a signal from me was to be
drawn out to daylight. Many attempts I
made when the badger charged to get him
with the tongs, but I had so little room to
work my hands in that I missed him, and
heard and felt the click and snack of his
teeth on the iron. At last I felt I had hold
of something, and I slipped the guard on the
tongs, making the hold sure. I cried " Haul
away," holding the terrier with one hand
between me and the badger, and the tongs
in the other. I found that he came with
wonderful ease. It was not till we got to the
light that I saw I had the huge bouncing
brute by one claw, " Nip " diverting his
attention from my head and hands. The
labourers set up a shout, "He's got him by the
clee," and a minute later we had the satisfac-
tion of bagging him. But we were out only
95
THE BADGER
just in time. I had gone back with the
terriers to see if there was nothing more in,
and hardly had got outside again, when there
was a fall from the roof that would, if it had
taken place earlier, have buried some of us
alive. As it was I looked round to see if we
were all there. The men were, but one little
terrier, " Pepper," a real treasure belonging
to a neighbour of mine in Cleveland, Mr. J.
P. Petch, was missing. We went in and
found him buried, but got him out alive and
little the worse. This was the biggest badger
my brother and I ever got.
But these operations are quite surpassed
by those M. le Masson related in the
following authentic story.
"An extraordinary chasse that lasted without
interruption three days and three nights, took
place lately in the neighbourhood of St.
Omer, on some land in the picturesque com-
mune of Wisques, in a wood attached to
the chateau of Madame la douairiere Cauvet
de Blanchonval.
"One morning two young sportsmen of
St. Omer, MM. Theobald Cauvet and
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THE BADGER
Charles d'Hallewyn, were told by the garde
forestier that on his beat he knew of several
badgers near the place they call 1'Ermitage.
" The little dogs being put on the scent
soon found the earths, where they entered,
and advanced with so much courage that
they never stopped till they had reached the
bottom of the earth, where they cornered
the badgers, which held their ground in an
attitude of the most threatening defence.
" The assailants, thus powerless, made
themselves heard by barking and baying
incessantly, and with heroic pluck, the little
fellows refused to retreat in spite of the
repeated calls of their masters.
"Their perseverance being carried to this
length, our young gentlemen formed a resolu-
tion worthy of their taste for great under-
takings and adventures. Labourers were
called from the field and commissioned at
once to set to work to reach the badgers.
"The attempt was more than bold. The
mouths of the set, three in number, were at
the foot of a hill, and embraced between them
a sort of triangular piece of land at the apex
97 H
THE BADGER
of which the passages all united and formed
a single underground gallery. The dogs
having each entered by a separate hole made
this clear.
" A shaft was sunk in order to start a
tunnel at the opening of the lowest hole, but
a depth of 7 to 8 metres (23 to 26 feet) had
to be sunk before the passage was reached ;
thence they followed the direction taken by
the dogs, and enlarged the tunnel to reach
them, making an underground roadway 5 feet
high (i^ metres) and nearly 6 feet wide
(if metres).
" Whilst the workmen were mining, the
badgers on their part were also working
ceaselessly, and kept blocking the road with
the earth they threw back in front of the
men who were pursuing them, whilst the
latter worked in shifts (relieving parties).
For three days and three nights these in-
domitable animals worked on, retreating all
the time, during which they bored their way
49 feet whilst buried in this extension of
their principal earth without air or food.
"Atone time during this war a entrance
98
THE BADGER
it was thought they had escaped by some
means or other, but the game terriers, which
had hardly left them since the beginning of
the struggle, soon reassured the workers by
their redoubled cries. The undertaking was
pushed on with greater determination than
ever, and when the tunnel had reached a
length of more than 30 metres (100 feet)
they came on three badgers, which were
quickly popped into a sack by the keeper.
One of them, however, in his struggles
succeeded in escaping from the sack, and
even tore the clothes of the man who was
carrying him. MM. Cauvet and d'Hallewyn
showed a persistent perseverance during the
whole of this struggle. By day and by
night each in turn directed the operations of
a siege at which more than one other lover
of the pleasures of the chase assisted."
I have given one or two out of many
examples I could relate of the arduous nature,
of badger-hunting. Discipline among the
workmen is as necessary as determination in
every attempt to dig out badgers. Nothing
imperils success so much as divided or
99
THE BADGER
disputed authority, and whilst every attention
should be given to the opinions expressed in
the councils of war during the progress of the
siege, there must be no hesitation in carrying
out the plan of campaign when once decided
on, or the day may be wasted in earthworks,
in making trenches, and attempts to cut off
subterranean ways which have been begun
only to be abandoned. The terriers are the
most important requisite ; they must be good,
the right size, hardy, enduring, and reliable.
No matter how game a dog is, if he cannot
follow the badger he is useless. He must
above all be full-mouthed, sharp-tongued, and
ready to keep his voice going for hours
together. He must be absolutely true, or he
may make a fool of you, and lie fast in the
earth baying an imaginary foe, or barking
and scratching to get up a small rabbit-hole.
Beware of a terrier that will think of such
vermin when employed to fly at much higher
game. They are worse indeed than useless,
and often have I been driven nearly wild by
being persuaded to allow some man proud of
his terrier to let him go.
THE BADGER
Nothing can be more exasperating than
when, after several hours of heavy labour and
straining effort, whilst the proud owner stands
smiling by and boasting the merits of his
nailing dog, you at length reach the scene of
all the disturbance to see a dirty little brute
scratching his feet to tatters, frothing at the
mouth, and wow-wowing to get up a three-
inch rabbit-hole.
An authority in the Gentleman s Magazine
recommends collars of bells being attached to
the terriers to make the badger bolt, and states
that broad collars of badger-skin save their
necks. The former I do not believe to be
efficacious, as fire, smoke, and crackers will
not make a badger bolt while any one is
about, and if it were efficacious it would be
very easy to lose a bolting badger. A collar
on a terrier is more likely to hang a dog on
a root end than to save him from a bite. A
terrier ninety-nine times out of a hundred is
bitten through the muzzle, under the jaws, and
about the skull and ears, and when inexperi-
enced, about the fore-legs and shoulders. I
never saw a terrier badly bitten in the neck,
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THE BADGER
though I have seen a terrier's side torn,
and one that turned tail punished severely
in the rear. Whilst the terrier for badger
should be game to the death, it is all-
important that he should mingle discretion
with his valour, and not drive his superior
foe to desperation, but content himself with
keeping him at bay, only using his teeth at
a pinch and in extreme cases. Tell me,
reader, how many terriers you know who
can or will go to ground, stay there, tell
the truth always, pass through every place
a badger can, keep his head under the
most exasperating circumstances, and come
up smiling and eager after every round, no
matter how much punished ?
What thousands of little curs there are
called terriers, and fox-terriers that will no
more go down a fox-earth than go up a
chimney ! How many thousands of the best
of these, however finely shaped for the show-
bench, that have no more idea of their pro-
fession and the duties for which nature made
them, and from which they derive their name,
than the man in the moon, and whose masters
102
THE BADGER
are satisfied if they can kill a few rats, and
think them wonderfully game if they will
tackle a cat !
From my boyhood I have had terriers, but
I never thought one worth keeping that could
not, or would not, go to ground and show
himself or herself worthy of their honourable
name. Appearance is nothing if the other
qualities are not present. I have had a little
wire-haired terrier bitch (with neat, golden-
tanned 'marked head), pretty and gentle, and
winning in all her ways, a companion that
slept on my bed each night, and looked the
picture of innocence lying by the hearth or
even on a lady's lap ; but within that bosom
beat a courageous little heart, in her head
throbbed a brain full of sagacious intelligence,
and in that soft brown eye lurked hidden fire.
She could give deep music long sustained,
and she never winced before the enemy. I
called her " Worry," a name that seemed most
mal a propos to her casual acquaintance. For
twelve long years she was at my side in all
the ups and downs of life, leading the drag
when I was at Cambridge, following fox-
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THE BADGER
hounds and bolting foxes when I was hunt-
ing, and my constant and daily companion,
accompanying me into every county when I
made an expedition against the badger. I
was once amused by the remarks made about
Worry by an old shoemaker who sometimes
accompanied us with a good terrier when we
were ratting. " Si' the (see thee), lads,
Worry's t' yan (the one) fer (for) pickin' t' wick
(the life) out on 'em," as she threw five
or six big rats over her shoulder in half
as many seconds. She died a terrible death,
but game and uncomplaining to the last.
She had a knack of squeezing herself through
almost any kennel bars, and I had had to put
her into a kennel for a time, and had the bars
made narrower and covered with mesh wire
netting. An hour after I had put her in I
went to see her, and I was horror-struck to
find that she was half through the bars
nipped as in a vice, the wire torn with her
teeth, and herself covered with blood and
wounds, with one eye hanging out, blood
flowing from her mouth, still fighting her
way on without a sound except her panting
104
THE BADGER
breath. She was delighted to see me, and
with some trouble I liberated her, cut off her
eye, staunched her wounds, and did all I
could for her. She never even winced as I
cut away the eye, and as she lay in her bed
looked at me affectionately with her one eye
and wagged her tail. - The following day,
though she did not even whine, I saw she was
in terrible pain ; and as she was at this time
badly ruptured, and very lame owing to
a carriage accident some years before which
resulted in a broken thigh and a double
fracture above the hock, I had her shot, and
buried in a quiet corner of the orchard, with
the inscription on her headstone " Sit tibi
terra levis"
The terriers I have found the best and
surest are amongst the Yorkshire breed of
hard, wire-haired fox-terriers, short in the leg
and strong headed. All my own have been
descended from a white, wire-haired terrier
called Fuss, the best bitch I ever had, and a
prize-winner. I bought her in 1870 or 1871
from a dealer called Wooton. She was bred
by a man called Jack Ridd. Worry was out of
THE BADGER
her. My brother got a dog, Roger, a dead
game one, at the same time from the same
man, and nearly all the terriers I have had
since are descended from these two, with
out-crosses from local strains, including the
Rev. Jack Russell's blood. I have seen
smooth-coated terriers do equally well, but
not often. The former is a harder and more
enduring breed, though more difficult to keep
clean in the coat, and taking time to get
dry after wet in cold weather. The endur-
ance of the wire-haired is remarkable. I
have now a terrier, bred through many lines
of my old favourites, which is twelve years
old. His jolly face is scored with the marks
of a thousand fights with fox and badger,
and though lame in his shoulders, his eyes
dim with age, and crippled with rheumatism,
showing toothless gums when he smiles his
welcome, he has twice this summer found
alone the badger earths, and returned at
evening, each time with his score of marks
increased, and on the last occasion he left
one of his ears behind him ! l A terrier that
1 Dead since this was written.
1 06
THE BADGER
will go off to a badger earth on his own
account, especially if a young one, will pro-
bably end his days and find his grave there.
I have known several do so. Poor old
Twig! Always happy, he seldom now
wanders further than the stable-yard, and
spends his declining days playing with the
foxhound pup or sleeping in the sun, when
in his dreams he fights his battles over again,
and thrice he slays the slain. When we were
young together he followed me every hunt-
ing morning to the meet, where he at once
incorporated himself with the pack, greeting
his friends in turn with a grin, a twist of his
body, and a wag of his stump ; and when the
daylight faded, and the horn sounded for
home, I had always to carry him off on my
saddle, so reluctant was he, after the longest
day, to leave his comrades of the chase.
This became so troublesome that at last I
yielded to the pressure of the huntsman, Will
Nicholl, who then hunted the Cleveland
hounds, to permit him to join the kennel
establishment. For three seasons he scarcely
missed a day, and when a fox was run to
107
THE BADGER
ground, no matter after how long or fast a run,
the question, " Where is Twig ? " was never
asked twice. Always there when wanted,
always dependable and perfect at his work,
he shifted many a sulky fox that went to
ground. Then Will Nicholl went to the
Hurworth under Sir Reginald Graham, and
took Twig with him. He did two seasons in
the Hurworth country, from thence going to
the Burton with Nicholl again. After a
season there I had a letter saying that
Nicholl feared that the old dog would not
follow hounds another season, and he sent
him back with me. I summered him well ;
he did the next season with the Cleveland,
and came out the following season when
hounds were handy or when occasion re-
quired, making eight seasons with foxhounds,
besides being hunted at badger in the summer
months. He had learnt not to be hard on a
fox, but I thought I detected him in an act
of violence something more than a year ago.
We had run to ground in a drain, and Twig,
who had heard hounds, had come across
country as fast as his old legs would carry
108
THE BADGER
him, and was in before I could say " Knife."
No sooner was he in than the fox was out,
with Twig at his brush. This was not at
all what we wanted, as the whole pack was
within fifteen yards. Twig collared the fox
as he bolted, and as the hounds were making
a dash at him. I was angry with Twig, lifted
the fox and Twig, who I thought was hold-
ing the fox, above my head to save reynard
from the hounds. Here I had to hold him
for five minutes, but when I tried to choke
the old dog off, I discovered that the fox was
holding Twig through the upper jaw, and
the dog was hanging with his whole weight
suspended on the fox's teeth. Having made
the fox leave go Twig fell to the ground, and
when all was clear I put the fox down, when
we had a sharp ten minutes to ground again.
I was there only just in time to prevent
Twig from going in to take his revenge
the fox this time being left in peace. It is
as well to have with you one bull-terrier, or a
fox-terrier with a bit of bull about him. In
cases of emergency, and when close up, such
a dog comes in useful, but they are tiresome
109
THE BADGER
brutes as a rule to do with ; they get so
excited that they do not care what they go
at, it may be the dogs or yourself, or I have
seen them set to worry a big stone. They
often go to ground well, but have several
faults. They will tackle the badger, get
punished severely, and create all sorts of
difficulties, and are generally nearly mute
except when fighting.
I had a rare life of it on one expedition
with a little bull-terrier called Nip that I
bought from a Cornishman, after a long dig
in which Nip had distinguished himself. He
was a dirty white, ugly, undershot, crop-eared
little brute, with a tail like a shaving-brush.
Shy and nervous, he had a fiendish amount
of pugnacity and pluck. When not other-
wise employed, he wore his teeth to the gums
in vain endeavours to get into the interior of
large stones. In a railway-carriage, so de-
lighted was he at all times to get to ground,
that he would get under the seat, and refuse
to be removed if he had not on a collar and
chain, except with the badger-tongs. He had
to be muzzled and chained when with other
THE BADGER
dogs, and even then would make an utter fool
of himself in his attempts to fight on every
occasion. He would, when he had lost a
badger, sulk and refuse to come out, and as
it was impossible to put in any other dog
while he was there, he had to be dug to and
drawn like a brock. Whilst at the end of a
day, when every other animal had had more
than enough, and was glad to get food and
rest, he was ready to hold me by the leg,
and it would take the tongs and a couple of
men to get his collar on.
I have always had a great admiration for
the short-coated, hard, Scotch terrier, and
believe that they are admirably adapted for
this chase, but I have had no experience
of them. They seem cut out for it, being
hardy, the right size, sharp-tongued, and
amongst the most intelligent of the canine
race. I knew of one who went to Craig
Cluny in the edge of the Ballochbuie forest,
and spent some hours in a vain attempt
to dislodge a badger. He returned three
miles to the inn at Braemar and found
another terrier like himself; they trotted
THE BADGER
back together, and by their united efforts
drew and killed an old badger ! There is a
spot near this place in the forest called
Stra-na-brach or the badger's crag but the
badger knows the place no more. The
keeper has done his work with the trap
throughout Aberdeenshire.
Dandie Dinmont no doubt bred his dogs
from these terriers, but I have no belief that
the present race is fitted for badger-hunting.
Those one sees on a show bench are too
large to get to ground quickly and easily, and
I doubt if there is one of the race, as at
present known, that has ever exchanged
civilities with the badger in his natural earth.
Dandie Dinmont bred his terriers for badgers,
but I am sure his never were the size they
are now ; and although Sir Walter Scott has
surrounded Dandie with a halo of interest,
and made him immortal by his eulogies, his
fiendish cruelties have always made me hate
his name, and prejudiced me against a breed
that was developed under a hideous system.
It makes my blood boil to read of his terriers
trained to face the badger by taking alive
THE BADGER
young and old badgers, and sawing off the
under jaws, and employing other indescribably
cruel methods.
The dachshund and the small basset,
when properly selected, are splendidly
adapted for badger-hunting. In Germany
the former, and in France the latter, are
generally bred for this purpose. Full- voiced
and throwing a tongue like a hound, deep-
chested, short-legged, and strong-bodied, they
are perhaps the best one can have, but I do
not think that they possess the endurance
and quickness of an English terrier.
There was a breed of wire-haired black-
and-tan English terriers, but I imagine them
to be nearly, if not altogether, extinct, that
from all accounts must have been really good
terriers in the true meaning of the term.
In working dogs, be careful only to put in
one at a time : you thus economize your
forces, and avoid the risk of their fighting in
the earth. More than this, if you let two
dogs or a dog and a bitch in together, you
subject them to danger and the probability
of severe punishment. The dog in front is
113 i
THE BADGER
charged by the badger, the. dog behind cares
for nothing but that he may get to close
quarters, and it is a case of those behind cry
forward and those in front cry back. In
such a position your terrier may have his
legs and head broken, and be killed outright.
Again, a good terrier works better and more
steadily than with a companion, as the com-
petition leads to jealousy. Put in your dog
at the lowest or bottom hole of the set,
driving the badger up-hill (or "to hill," as it
is technically called) if you can. It is a much
easier task to get a badger out in this
manner, as the further up-hill the fewer are
the passages, and generally speaking the
nearer they lie to the surface. Furthermore,
take care that you have a collar and chain
for each dog, and that every terrier not on
duty is securely fastened at a distance from
the earth, and out of reach of any other
dog.
The following are the requisite implements
for badger digging; they should be good and
handy tools :
i and 2. Spades. These should be handy,
114
THE BADGER
and worn to that condition when the edge is
sharp, and the tool works easily, without
having lost its strength. They should vary
but little from the ordinary garden or rabbit-
Z.
FIG. 7.
ing spade, except that where there is a depth
of clay, and when in a deep trench, it may
be easier or a relief to use a drainer's long
narrow one.
"5
THE BADGER
3. A crowbar.
4. A scraper, or coal-rake.
5 and 6. Shovels, for clearing out the loose
earth, including a short-handled one, or
scoop, for opening the holes to let in air to
the dogs.
7. An earth-piercer, in order to locate the
fight.
116
117
THE BADGER
8. Tongs. The handles should be of
wood, as steel and iron "give" under the
pressure of a man's strength at one end and
the badger at the other. With wooden
handles and steel fittings there will still be
spring enough to work the guard, which is
put on to secure the hold on the animal.
9. Adze, or hatchet, for cutting roots of
trees.
10 and ii. Picks, single or double.
Do not forget when starting on a badger-
hunt to take plenty of refreshment with you,
and remember that it is a dry job digging
ceaselessly on a summer's day. Draught cider,
light beer, and cold tea are the best liquors
to work on for a long stretch. Do not leave
the sacks behind you, nor cord to secure
them with. And finally, reader, if you are a
true sportsman, whilst sparing neither neces-
sary pain to yourself nor dog during the
progress of the siege, do not subject your
terriers to unnecessary exposure and punish-
ment; and when the day's work is done,
however weary and however hungry you
may be, do not attend to your own wants till
118
THE BADGER
you have seen each member of your gallant
little pack well brushed and oiled (eyes and
ears and wounds, if any, cleaned), fed, and put
into a kennel with plenty of clean bedding.
And do not forget to make a brave foe as
comfortable as you can. If you keep a badger
in confinement as a pet, he should have
access to plenty of fresh cold water, and be
fed on young rabbits and bread till accus-
tomed to confinement, after which he will
take gradually to and remain healthy on
almost any scraps, meat, and vegetables from
the house that you give him. He requires
a dry dark kennel and yard, which should be
kept scrupulously clean, when he will never
be offensive. Some badgers take kindly at
once to these new circumstances, others sulk
and occasionally waste and die unless great
care is taken. If the badger's evacuations
show a tendency to purging, feed on bread
chiefly and rabbit, or if fastidious in his
appetite, give raw eggs and bread.
If by this little book I have done anything
towards interesting those who care about the
perpetuation of a wild and interesting animal
119
THE BADGER
that" is fast disappearing from our hillsides
and valleys, and shown that healthy exercise
and pleasure can be obtained in protecting
him from extinction and by fairly entering
the lists against him, I shall have done some-
thing towards delaying that sad day when
the last badgers, with the lessons of courage
and endurance that they can teach, have
vanished for ever.
THE END
Richard Clay <5r> Sons, Limited, London <Sr> Bungay.
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