In my last post I said that I got closer to a live badger than ever before. The emphasis on ‘live’ was deliberate. One of the more onerous tasks I set myself is monitoring dead badgers in the area, particularly road casualties. We had another dead badger on the road today, about a mile from my house and just down the road from the wood where most of the casualties have occurred over the past two years.
For the record, the badger was male and seemingly in the pride of life. It measured 73com from nose to base of tail, so slightly smaller than average. From the state of its teeth it was relatively young, or at least not elderly (I’m not very good at telling the age of mammals – immature ones are significantly smaller than the average adult size, and very old ones tend to have bad teeth, but this still leaves a large gap in between. I’ll have to see if there are any more clues to age to look for). Near the badger was a very well worn path crossing the road between the wood and some pasture fields, so this is obviously a regular route to the feeding grounds. One of these days I really must get permission to enter these woods, as there is at least one and probably two active setts in there.
Tales from the Wood - The Diary of a Badger Watching Man 
Hi bwm,
in general, the roadkill badgers I have found are almost always en-route to feed or roaming males, try to note ‘runs’ these will become more obvious over Summer. Then using Google earth/maps try & determine the hotspots. It should be possible to determine aproximate location of setts to within a few hundred yards. That should simplify the process of mapping adjacent territories . Checking the hardness of a badgers pads usually gives some indication as to the age, along with wear on the fur, thats not exactly scientific, but older badgers invariably have more scars than young ‘uns.
Hi Spiney – I’ll have to try looking at the pads, that’s a good tip. I must admit that I didn’t look too closely for scars (the badger wasn’t in great shape), but I’ll try it next time. I’m pretty sure there’s at least two active setts in this particular wood, but I don’t know who owns it so I can’t get permission to go in at the moment. I’ll keep it on my things to do list for the summer though.
[…] This is the same spot where we had the last casualty (or at least the last that I found) back in April. I try to get basic information on road victims – size, sex, approximate age etc – for […]