It was just east of Idaho Falls, past Iona. I was doing golden eagle surveys on a proposed wind farm site. The site was on ag land bordering the Snake River. I had done surveys at this site in the winter. Traveled by snowmobile from survey point to survey point. This was august now, the first summer survey for eagles, and traveling from point to point was by truck, or on foot when a survey point was in the middle of a wheat field. Our crew of three biologists was one man short this day, and so we were looking at a long day, dawn to dusk. We do surveys separately, staying in contact via radio. In route to my third or fourth survey point for the day, there happened to be a convenient swath of dirt, wide enough to drive on, that separated an unplanted field of last years wheat stubble, and a green field of this years wheat, about knee high. I decided to drive this dirt swath to the point up on the top of the rise to save time. So I was driving towards the point, just several hundred yards off the gravel road, when a large badger ran right in front of the truck, out of the wheat stubble and into the green field. Without a thought, I had slammed the truck into park and was out of the door after him.
I had always wanted to go after a badger, hand to hand. Mano y taxus. I had tackled armadillos, tailed cat-eating opossum, climbed after treed raccoons until they bailed from the top, removed entangled vampire bats from nets, wrangled large rattlesnakes, and even punched out a nutria that was tangling with my dog as a youth, but such game presented little in the way of real danger. A badger posed real threat. A worthy opponent and adversary of mankind and ground dwelling rodents alike. I just had to beat him to his hole.
I was on him in no time as I pursued him through the field chasing the moving grass that readily gave his position away. I planned to cut him off before he got to his hole. But before I had a chance to angle off for the cut-off, he whipped around, hunkered down and lunged at me the instant I was within reach. I popped back just out of reach, and we growled intensely at each other. This was the beginning of a long, ugly battle.
To be continued...
