A friend contacted me tonight to ask me if I had seen the dead badger not far from my house. I had not, but wanted to investigate and see if it was still there.
I walked up to the main road from my house. I have not captured badgers in this area on my Bushnells at all. Sure enough, on the side of the main road, was a dead badger. It was positioned a couple of metres from the edge of the road… too far to have been flung there by an impact and facing the wrong way for an animal that had been hit and then run in panic before succumbing. I took a closer look at it. It was a male and I could see no obvious marks other than some blood on the grass under its nose suggesting that it had been in this position fairly soon after death. May be someone hit it and put it up on the bank? I could see no other obvious signs that it might have been shot and dumped there.
I turned it over and the grass underneath was pale and some decomposition had started to take place so this badger has been there for a while I would think. It looked like a healthy individual and I was just glad it was not a lactating female, leaving cubs somewhere. The question that remains in my mind is where had it travelled from? That part of the main road has no obvious badger potential sites nearby. I have seen them on the fields on the other side of my house, but that is in the opposite direction and they would have had to have crossed my lane, the field next to me to get to the main road….. strange. Let’s hope there are no suspicious circumstances regarding its death, but lots of questions still hang in my mind. Sadly, those questions will remain unanswered.