August 21, 2016
To set the scene, this was a day of work while working for the Game and Fish Department. I lived in a trailer with my partner for about 4 months in Southeastern Arizona.
We awoke early in the morning to begin work, we got out of bed at 3AM, and started work at 3:30AM. The morning had a slight brisk feel, so as to begin to welcome the cooler temperatures. Myself behind the wheel, eyes hardly open, energy drinks cracked, we began the drive to our work destination.
This drive in particular is mostly straight and flat, perfect to put the early morning driver to sleep, no matter how much Monster is drank. All of a sudden, however, a figure stood on the side of the road, illuminated by nothing but our headlights amidst the deep darkness of the Sonoran desert. My partner and I were both startled as we caught a glance of a crashed vehicle as we drove past, and knew that we needed to turn around to help the person that was roadside.
Now wide awake, we turned the truck around and went back to this person’s location – a female, who had the unfortunate experience of flipping her vehicle, leaving her stranded 30 or more miles from the nearest town. We managed to calm her down until DPS arrived, and we left the scene going back to work.
We now hustled in effort to get to our work site before the sun came up, but we lost a decent amount of time. We had only about 12 miles of dirt road left until we reached our destination, and the sun’s rays were already peeking over the horizon. We continued to drive until we spotted something.
“What is that?”
…”IT’S A BADGER”
We stopped the truck, firearms in hand, all in effort to harvest our first badger. This was the first badger we had seen since the season had been open, and we were hoping to capitalize on the moment.
But we didn’t. The badger snuck away in the tall grass, not to be seen again. We did everything we could to find it, but we couldn’t. Disappointed, we returned to the truck.
The morning provided with decent snake action. We saw multiple large diamondbacks, though we let them all move on unscathed.
We ended the morning badger-less as we headed back to our trailer.
Working split days, we headed back out to the same work site in the afternoon, and it was filled with a large amount of snakes. We came across snake after snake after snake, most of which were diamondbacks, most of which were small neonates (juveniles). We did harvest a couple of snakes, but we mostly just moved them off the road.
Just as the sun began to set, we saw another mysterious creature in the road.
It was another badger, and we weren’t going to let this one get away. We ran after the badger as it ran into a thick tree.
But it didn’t come out of the tree. Though we had the tree surrounded, it must have slipped past us through, once again, the tall grass. We lost another badger, perhaps even the same badger. We checked the surrounding area tirelessly, only to not find the badger.
Disappointed once again, we returned to the truck to begin our drive back to the trailer. About a mile down the road, there was, again, another creature in the road.
Another badger, probably the same badger, was found. I thought about our previous mistakes, and had a game plan so that we wouldn’t lose another one.
At this point, my partner took a shot with his 22-250, of which hit the badger, but was not a lethal shot. I immediately took off after the badger, game plan in mind.
I ran a solid 50 yards as quickly as possible, and stopped. My game plan was to use the tall grass to my advantage, rather than my hindrance. I stayed calm, looking not for the badger, but for moving grass instead. Sure enough, about 30 yards away, was shuffling grass. I started running after the badger.
Jumping over cactus, scraped up by acacia, all while watching out for rattlesnakes, I chased this badger about a hundred yards. I was hoping to get close enough that it would turn in an aggressive posture, allowing me for a still shot.
After I got within about 15 feet of the badger, it did exactly what I hoped. The badger stopped, turned, and began to growl in an aggressive posture. I shot the badger with my 9mm, and we finally killed our first badger.
This was a monumental day for us, as it was a long series of roller coaster events that we will forever remember. Harvesting our first badger was an incredible experience, and one we will never forget.
