{"id":46867,"date":"2017-03-22T06:16:14","date_gmt":"2017-03-22T12:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=46867"},"modified":"2017-03-22T06:46:43","modified_gmt":"2017-03-22T12:46:43","slug":"up-close-and-eye-level-to-a-badger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/22\/up-close-and-eye-level-to-a-badger\/","title":{"rendered":"Up Close And Eye Level To A Badger"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s something quite intimidating about being this close and eye level to a badger. Especially the “eye level” part.<\/p>\n

Recently I’ve been watching two fresh badger holes on Antelope Island. Both are within just a few feet of the\u00a0badger holes where I photographed a deadly encounter between a couple of weasels and a badger<\/a> about three years ago. So it goes without question that I’ve been keeping a sharp eye out for badgers at these new holes and that reminded me of another encounter I had\u00a0with a badger that got my attention, but for a different reason. Thus this post.<\/p>\n

In August of 2012\u00a0I was photographing a family of Swainson’s Hawks from my pickup on a dirt road in Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in southwest Montana. I was shooting over the top of a small hill\/road cut that was right next to the road (only a few feet away) when suddenly\u00a0an unexpected badger popped out of his\/her hole\u00a0between me and the hawks and very near the top edge of the road cut.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1\/800, f\/13, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

The badger was almost exactly at my eye level and so close that I had to remove my teleconverter to keep all of\u00a0him? in the frame. I don’t think\u00a0he appreciated my presence in the least and we had a stare-down for a few minutes that was pretty intimidating as I watched him through my lens.<\/p>\n

It was\u00a0uncomfortable shooting for me because there were grasses in front of him so I sat up as high in my pickup as I could in an attempt to shoot over them. The top of\u00a0my lens\u00a0was almost touching the top of my\u00a0window frame and I remember my muscles shaking as I tried to maintain that uncomfortable position. At this shutter speed a lot of blurry shots were the result of my muscle tension.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1\/640, f\/13, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

For me there’s something extremely menacing about being this close to a badger. I’ve seen\u00a0several video clips involving badger fights and I once watched an encounter between a dog and a really pissed off badger. Believe me I never<\/em> want to be on the receiving end of their anger.\u00a0I felt safe in my pickup of course but I kept asking myself if I’d like to be out there on foot, this close and at eye level. Especially<\/em> at eye level.<\/p>\n

The answer always came back as an emphatic\u00a0“Hell no!”.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – I don’t want to give the impression that we need to fear badgers under normal\u00a0circumstances. If we don’t bother them they’ll reciprocate. But\u00a0I was unintentionally closer to this badger than I really wanted to be.<\/em><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s something quite intimidating about being this close and eye level to a badger. Especially the “eye level” part.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46875,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[818,360],"tags":[819,220,263],"class_list":["post-46867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-badgers","category-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge-favorite-locations","tag-badger","tag-montana-2","tag-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/badger-4455-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-cbV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}