briarpatch wrote:Dan, I have witnessed this type of thing quite a bit. If the badger was in a "hole" such as a man built wooden tunnel the badger was at a disadvantage IF the dog was strong and brave enough to charge into the animal and take a deep hold. A few dogs are. The badger cannot manuever in there and if the dog will grab deeply and stay with it the fight is over.
briarpatch
If you dont think a badger can manuever in a tunnel, you have never seen a badger, let alone one with a dog after it. How is it you witnessed this "quite a bit"?
I have never seen this with a badger but can believe it.
It has alot to do with the dog and is not a breed thing. Some dogs just kill so fast its not even funny while others "Fight", lots of noise but they just don't get it done efficently.
I have only had two what I would call "kill dogs", no badgers where I hunt but we do have Javalina and Coati. If a dog that is a fighter gets on one of those there will be a big fight and torn up dog, critter might be dead at the end but its going to be messy and take several minutes. When a "kill" dog gets on one, the fight, if you can call it that is over in seconds and dog is rarly touched.
Big N' Blue wrote:Years ago!! LOL when Coon in a hole and coon on a log were legal at UKC hunts there was a man in Texas that had a badger. He would take it to all the hunts and make a fortune putting him in a log and betting a hundred dollars at a time that a dog could not pull him out of the log. Well he made a lot of money as those gritty coon dogs just did'nt have the heart. In Waco, one of my friends had an old B&T that had no back-up in him and hit the back of that log so hard, he killed the badger and pulled him out and I thought the guy would cry!! LOL He had lost his money making machine. Damn I miss the old days!
Yep !!! I have several old Full Crys with some of the different "Games" as the Field Trial Foke begain to Tire and slack off .. and the Badger looked like a rough one .. And the Coon on a log was a good one too ..
We have had quite a few Run-ins with Badger out Grouse Hunting in the Red Desert of Wy. Theirs a pile of Badger out their !! One of our GSP was tracking some gouse thru some very thick and tall sage and must of stuck his nose down a hole, Well the GSP was STUCK right their with a Badger Locked on his snout.. We had to shoot over the Pointer nose down the hole to kill the Badger to get him loose, by the time we got back to Jeffery City to Patch him up his Nose was as big as a Base Ball.. Not Fun at All
It has alot to do with the dog and is not a breed thing. Some dogs just kill so fast its not even funny while others "Fight", lots of noise but they just don't get it done efficently.
Great post partner. Trust me when I say that I "KNOW" exactly what you are talkin about and I agree with you 100% but that still dont get shed of the fact that a mature badger just wont die quickly and neither will a mature coon nor coyote. Still though, great post cuz you are 100% correct. I hear these two words all the time in the coyote dog world, "fights hard". I just laugh cuz I know that those folks have no idea what they are talkin about. Kill dogs dont fight, they kill.
You are so correct on the difference in hard fighting dogs and kill dogs. As a kid we had a family English Pointer named Doc. This dogs was a kill dog, and he needed no help to kill a bobcat, a large coon or a badger. In reality the coon was the hardest task for him due to their agility and tenacity coupled with the large size we had up their in Montana with some boars running well in excess of 30 pounds. The bobcats were a breeze for him and badgers didn't bother him. I thought maybe the half bird dog hound I talked about earlier would make a kill dog but he never did he was a bay dog only but he would hold them and grab and flip them long eneough usually for me to get there. Later my Old Gunsmoke dog old time long eared black and tan was the greatest coon killer I ever saw and needed no help and actually preferred to work alone and even in a stream or pond he would bring the big boars out and kill them like crunching potato chips. Never saw him on a badger but he was death on coons
Later I raised another black and tan colored dog out of Bud Hutching's Utah dogs and he also was a kill dog and he had a passion for killing javelinas, but his craving for killing got him killed by a bad assed bear down in the prickly pear flats. Bears don't kill very easy. LOL!
My last black and tan killer was purchased from John McDonald of Alba Texas. This was the skunk killing machine of all machines. I mean he would hit them and it almost look like you shot them with a 22-250. He would just demolish them and stink! OMG!!! But I did see this dog I called Rambo one night take on a full grown beaver in the San Juan River. I just knew from what I had heard this dog would be sliced and diced but when the splashing and fighting ended Rambo towed that thing to shore dead broke back and broke neck the dog was nuts!!! I sold him to Earl Stuber of Wilcox and he said he made a heck of a bear dog but I am surprized he lived very long. LOL!
Well, for sure a badger can get a broke neck. I ran into an area full of bagers. The badgers seem to be in pockets. It was high up badgers with thick fur. I have a young pup that has a love for squirels and now badgers. The dogs got a couple stopped in the open. I'm telling you it was fun as any hunt. And they have really nice fur. I cased them and now I have an order for one to be mounted so I got at least one more to get before I decide to break any pups. Sean
I've go a young Bluetick female here at the house for some training. She normally resides in Michigan. When she was around 9 months old, she killed one while out running. No other dogs just her. She is gritty to say the least. Yes, she killed it completely alone.
Ok, I did read about badger digs in England. Its an illegal sport there. They send dogs underground into their tunnels. The hunters have different type of badger dogs. Diggers, nose dogs and catch dogs. I remember that the catch dog is required to grab the badger by the nose and hold it until the men dig it out. I also remember reading that they lost quite a few catch dogs. Bull terriers are one type used as catchers. The badgers I found were in the open not digging. They were bringing the fight to the dogs. I took the first shot available. Sean
I guess anything is possible. But one dog killing a badger I would have to see with my own eyes. I've caught about 15 badger with dogs over the years anywhere from 2 dogs to 6 or 8. Why? Cause, I love the sound of a good race and dogs bayed-up as much as the next guy. I've seen dogs get the upper hand on some animals and 1 dog and a coon in the right conditions is not much of a fight. But a badger from what I have seen they seem to hand out plenty of licks and don't show alot of signs of wearing down. I think that they are built kind of like a wedge and all of that loose skin aroung the head makes it real hard for a dog to get to the throat. I used to let these fights go on for awhile but anymore I just wade in there and take care of business. Got tired of infections and staples. Here is a couple of pictures. You can see the loose skin I am talking about in the second pic.
in the UK ( not legal now )when badger hunting in there earth with small dogs the job of the dog is to stop the badger digging away from it and to try to keep it in one place long enough for the hunter to dig down to it ,if the dog holds it in one place untill the hunter get to it sometimes a bigger dog is used to draw it out ,i have never heard of any dog in the UK ever killiing a badger under ground when it fights under ground it has its head down and will use its strong jaws striking foreward and up and will also use its claws on its front legs with a sideways slashing movement all injuries to the dog would be to the under jaw and chest area
Seeing that you are from the U.K you should be able to find literture on this dog. Look up Mildeton's Toby. Some interesting reading there. Plus the badgers in the U.K are nothing close to the ones in North America. If you start reading on the comparrisons it's like comparing pitbulls to poodles. They are similar but no where being the same critter.
Blue i don't look up anythink about small terriers these days as i no longer hunt with them only larger dogs ,as for the badgers i have lived and hunted small dogs in both in the Uk and canada for badger so i know they are different
I had a blue healer that would kill badgers. He would ride on the four wheeler with me riding around the ranch and any coyotes or badger that ran across our path was fair game. I would run them down til they stopped and he would kill them. He would get cut up sometimes but nothing serious. He usually killed them very quickly. Sometimes I would pull him off if he got into any trouble but I saw him kill many badgers! (I've got witnesses) I really miss that Buster dog. He got kicked in the head by a cow and didn't recover.
I did notice that the badger has two bulb like bones on the bottom of its skull near the throat area. I was wondering what these are for. Maybe they protect it from getting killed when bitten there. Sean
007pennpal wrote:I did notice that the badger has two bulb like bones on the bottom of its skull near the throat area. I was wondering what these are for. Maybe they protect it from getting killed when bitten there. Sean
I think you are looking at the auditory bullae. It's where the eardrum is.
