Are badgers in the same league as foxes?

BRACES of Bristol - Sauer 100 XTA Stainless Package
Foxyboy43

Foxyboy43

Well-Known Member
Over the years I have seen a number of examples of badgers killing various wildlife - particularly our bloody pheasants!
Sooo I thought it might be worth seeking the SD collective’s views on old Brock who, unlike his bushy-tailed partner in crime enjoys the full protection of the law (no, I don’t know why either and let’s not even mention TB).
As a starter this is a return visit from a hen killer - granted this time his quarry had already gone to that great hen house in the sky but nevertheless chicken was defo on the menu. Next day only two feet and 6 inch long sinews remained…
🦊🦊
 
Not only will they have the odd feast on your pheasants but they will also scoff their food at an alarming rate whilst not being too particular about the feeders themselves. Although foxes can be quite canny, a well constructed pen will keep them out. But badgers are at least as adept at breaking through defences (or should that be the fences).

Basically, the law means having badger setts on your land makes that area virtually a no go area.
 
If it's on the ground it's on the menu for Brock. Watched one pull a sitting partridge off a nest once, I knew that she would be pipping off that day or the next. Brock went down the hedge, stopped with his head cocked, obviously listening and shot into the hedge,had hen and eggs.
Watched them put leverets up and course them.
The strength of him has to be seen to be believed, one caught in a fox wire isn't dead just demolished five feet of hedge. New restraints obviously don't do that, I'm on about years ago.
Scent and hearing excellent, eyesight not too clever,this making him excellent at hoovering up everything on the ground.
Clever too, I've watched one climb rabbit netting, turned around on the top then climbed down backwards the other side.
If he loses his temper with a feeder of wheat, you're replacing the feeder.
All in all, not the friendly jovial chap he's portrayed as. Personally I blame Kenneth Graham 🤣
 
Badgers can be persistent and lethal predators. I had one break into my own hen house and kill everything in it, except one broody who was sitting on eggs. I've also seen a pair of them climb a six-foot-high wire netting fence to get at some chickens. A friend of mine had one badger that broke through a fruit cage wire netting fence, then through a chicken run fence after which it ripped off the nest box went inside and killed half a dozen chickens.
Make no mistake, at times their antics can put foxes in the shade.
 
30lb stoats on steroids. Given the chance they hammer the poultry on the units worse than a fox. To watch them ripping into a carcass through the thermal is something else.
 
We have had one raiding a certain catcher every night, We thought it might have been a fox at first until I seen it on the thermal, Luckily the said catcher wasn't being very successful so it was moved and it didn't manage to do a great deal of damage, the last of the Pheasants have gone now so it will have to move back onto the worms and scavenge
 
as ive said on here before, I shot half a dozen rabbits or so put them in a pile to go and pick some more up , turned around 100yds away a badger had all there heads
clean of in seconds , 30kg killer
 
Foxes are territorial and more or less solitary, or at any rate don’t congregate in large extended family groups. They all eat, but consider how many badgers would inhabit the range of a pair of foxes…
 
Freeforester said:
Foxes are territorial and more or less solitary, or at any rate don’t congregate in large extended family groups. They all eat, but consider how many badgers would inhabit the range of a pair of foxes…
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Foxes have large family groups for sure
 
mudman said:
No not by a million miles
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Totally agree with this

Badger are very very lazy - if they come across something maybe they will eat it - and yes they are defo bad for nests and chicks but nothing like a fox

Most who spend hours looking through a thermal would concur

When i first got my thermal - the first or second night i saw a badger course a hare like a dog - and thought wow these are serious animals - since then and im out a lot - and i also have a lot of badgers on the ground - i have watched them walk past hares - poults - jugged partridges and not so much look at them. Im sure they will kill and do kill - but nothing like the killing machine a fox is
 
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