Hounding badgers?

[Hermit]

yes it was steve he is a friend of mine and doc was the other posting i know he comes on here as i have seen the name

[STUNTMAN]

Ya it was Steve and or Uphill. That soil out in the desert is bad an Iowa man came and locked one down with his terriers and they didnt breathe right for a week. Have to be dug out in the farm lands like Fairfield I would think.

[Stubby]

I'd posted this a while back on another board but I don't think I'm repeating myself by posting it here.

"We were walking out of an alpine basin where we had done a bridge site survey and I was ahead of my partner who is not a dog guy or hunter. I was at the truck and he was back a ways when he says "your dog's stuck in a hole" I shrugged it off when he goes "whoa there's an animal in there" and comes bailing back up to the road from over the bank. All I could think of was porcupine and went barrelling back yelling like hell at Grizz to get out of there. I just got there when Grizz pulls a pissed off badger out of the burrow and starts chomping it up. I've got to admit the badger was giving as good as he was getting and every time Grizz would go for a new hold the badger would lock on to his face somewhere and deflect the worst. Badgers are pretty rare here and are protected so after a bit I broke Grizz off and let the badger get back down his den and lick his wounds but it was pretty interesting. I wish I had a camera."

Some points I'd like to make are, that's pretty unusual country in my opinion to find a badger but there were lots of ground squirrels around.
Second those guys who talk about kill dogs and others are right on the money. Some dogs just know where to target to get the job done quick and easy and others like Grizz just barrel in and grab whatever is in the way and crunch it. Had he been a kill dog I know it would have been game over before I could have broke him off but I'm sure he would have killed it eventually.
Third point is guys seem real skeptical of some posts because they are sure that whatever their dogs do is the limit of what a dog can or will do. I've seen pics of a half dozen dogs bayed up around a badger or a bobcat and just have to laugh. Not putting anyone's dogs down cause they had to find it after all and my old bluetick certainly was anything but a hair puller but not all dogs are wired the same.

[Hermit]

i know that we should all look at the size of badger as well when we talk about what a dog will do as i know that where i was in canada they went from around 11 lb to 20 lb and there is a big difference in what they will and can do

[UphillDoc]

Stubby-I am skeptical...but I promise you it aint because I dont know what dogs are capable of, or because I have bay dogs. I bet Im one of the few on here that actually hunted badger with dogs. I know all about kill dogs, cause I wont keep anything else.
You think its a coincidence that the two fellas I was skeptical about didnt respond when I questioned their posts? I dont...

Take care.

[Fenris]

Thought I should tell you a bit about our European badgers and the way we hunt them over here. I guess I have been a participant in 200+ badgers death by the help of terriers, hounds or laikas. I have still not seen one single badger being killed by one dog alone, but we've had some dogs hurt pretty bad by badgers.

Our badgers weigh up to about 25 kilos, and are as someone before me mentioned a pretty quiet an pleasant animal... Until being chased by dogs. When we train young dogs for bearhunting here in Scandinavia, we try to hunt lots of badgers with them because of the fierceness in this animal when bayed by dogs. A badger acts about the same way as a bear stopped on the ground, and teaches the dogs in witch end the teeth are located!

The reason why the terriers on the picture with the badgers on the Toyota are not all beaten up is because we hunt for badgers with terriers that hold a bit of distance to the badger in the den, they just lie there barking until we dig them out and shoot the badger. If you use a tough terrier on a European badger, it will be hurt badly and often die of the injuries. The badger turns the head to the side and let the dogs bite it in the neck/shoulder area, then it turns back and destroys the terriers throat/ lower jaw area. Being 3 times the weight of our earth dogs the badger has a great advantage over terriers that comes too close.

One of my hounds and my laika usually toss the badger around like a ragdoll, really trying to kill it, but havent succeeded doing this alone yet (when I come up to them, I shoot the badger). Dont know anything about badgers in America, but our badgers are quite a challenge for a dog, and it's a game well worth hunting!

[Lynxhunter]

Hi there Fenris, fellow Norwegian here.

I held back posting on this tread since it was greed upon earlier in the tread that european badgers are whimps.....

Agree with what you've stated. I think the key is "tossing". Dogs that toss them, fight them instead of kill them. Badgerkillers need to go in and clamp down with their molars in the back end of the skull and crush it. I have not got all the experience you've got, but I've seen it happen some times, both with multiple dogs and single dogs. Do not promote this though, since it breakes strongly with our hunting ethics.


Hans

[BEAR HUNTER]

If you want to see an old line of straight up tough terriers Check out www.redriverok.com/mmterriers (if the link doesnt work just google M&M WORKING TERRIERS). These are the old school Gould line bred Russell imported from England. They have no back up in em. None of this face barking stough just go in grab a holt and start backing out of the hole. I hunted with the Jacks years ago when coon hunting the rice fields. The coon would go into the culverts. The owner of the dogs is Roger Mccoy, Super guy to talk to . I got out of the terriers along time ago but still have an old female (12 yrs). Sure do miss them. Never got em on badger but always wanted to .

[Hermit]

the dogs that you have just talked about do not sound like russells they sound more like white lakelands that have been breed and sold as russells because they are white , no dog that has been breed to work to badger would work the way you have just said as it would not last 5 minutes in this world as a good badger dog the ones that are the good ones that last are the baying terriers as there job is to only stop the badger turning to dig away when they turn the dog will attack the badgers back end to make him stop and turn back around to face the terrier again and to keep doing this to hold it in that place it is this that gives the hunter the time to dig down to the badger ,you have also said that you have not hunted badger before so why would you recommend dogs to work them that way that are not the right dogs for the job the dogs you have talked of are more for hunting fox

[Big N' Blue]

Stubby-I am skeptical...but I promise you it aint because I dont know what dogs are capable of, or because I have bay dogs. I bet Im one of the few on here that actually hunted badger with dogs. I know all about kill dogs, cause I wont keep anything else.
You think its a coincidence that the two fellas I was skeptical about didnt respond when I questioned their posts? I dont...

Take care.

The only reason that I did not reply to you what you said was there was nothing to reply to. You do not beleive it and I'm not going to argue about it! LOL

[BEAR HUNTER]

Hermit you are right, I have never hunted badgers but have always wanted to. I have however always had an affection for game terriers. My comment was not an endorsement of these dogs to hunt badgers. It was more to illicit the response you gave as to how those type of dogs would work on a badger. They came from Ken Gould out of England and are well known among terrier people. Who knows what was bred into them could be a pit bull for all I know. My experience with them was hunting big coon 30-40 lbs around rice fields and a few fox. The fox were no challenge for the dogs. Would love to see you write some stories or post some pictures on here of how you work terriers and your thoughts and opinions of the different breeds. You sound like a knowledgable guy whom a fellow could learn from.

[Dan Edwards]

Great post fenris.

[Hermit]

bear hunter
if you have read my earlier post you would have seen that i said that i no longer keep small terriers and will not even read about them now as my interest is in larger dogs so it is not likely that you will see any stories from me but you will get my occasional thoughts and opinions on some of the small terrier posts that i think that i want to say somethink to ,as for pictures i do not keep any pictures of (any dogs hunting )as it is not legal were i am and it also was not where i lived canada just before i left all pictures i had i got rid off as did most of the hunters i new at that time that where getting unwanted visits at there doors at night from people they did not know, that for me was about 7 years ago and hope that the people on this board never have to do that themselves and learn from others that it has happend to ,no hunting with dogs happened within 3 months where i was in canada after a hunter went on tv to show how he hunted

[blue]

bear hunter
if you have read my earlier post you would have seen that i said that i no longer keep small terriers and will not even read about them now as my interest is in larger dogs so it is not likely that you will see any stories from me but you will get my occasional thoughts and opinions on some of the small terrier posts that i think that i want to say somethink to ,as for pictures i do not keep any pictures of (any dogs hunting )as it is not legal were i am and it also was not where i lived canada just before i left all pictures i had i got rid off as did most of the hunters i new at that time that where getting unwanted visits at there doors at night from people they did not know, that for me was about 7 years ago and hope that the people on this board never have to do that themselves and learn from others that it has happend to ,no hunting with dogs happened within 3 months where i was in canada after a hunter went on tv to show how he hunted

So I take it you were one of many of us who got out of coyote hunting in Alberta? Pretty much had to sell my whole kennel of staghounds after that crap hit the news.

[Hermit]

at that time i was hunting small terriers russells,pats,jagd and jagd x but had just started to look for some stags to run but when that guy and his wife went on the tv i ended up getting some airedales as i felt people would look at them a little differently if seen when out ,i hope to get back there or BC some time in the future to live and hunt with my airedales and then also get some hounds as these are the dogs i want to hunt now ,when you see just how fast you can lose your hunting you realize posting pictures or video's or haveing them at home with dogs and game on is not the best thing to do
you don't know what you have lost untill you have lost it, the only dogs that could hunt there when this happened i was told was the hound guy that hunted the bad lions for them