How to track down a badger sett

Arguably the most charismatic British mammal, the Eurasian badger (Latin name: Meles Meles) is the tank among our mammal species. Able to climb, swim, and sprint at up to 45mph, they’re brilliantly adapted for any situation. Strictly omnivorous, over 50% of a badger’s diet (much more according to some people) is exclusively made up of Earthworms, although they will eat pretty much anything. From fruit, nuts, and leaves to toads, bees’ nests; even hedgehogs and rabbits are hunted down and killed.

Two badgers caught on a camera trap, the secret weapon of any mammal

watcher.

However, owing to their nocturnal habits and secretive nature, they’re often hard to see in the flesh, more often found dead at the side of the road. Luckily for us though, they leave signs of their presence everywhere and this blog post will be a basic guide about how to find these elusive animals because they’re probably a lot closer to you than you think…

Where to start looking?

Being such adaptable animals, badgers readily colonize a range of habitats, including forests, uplands, meadows, and increasingly urban gardens. Their preferred habitat though is deciduous woodland (a woodland that annually sheds its leaves), with a nearby open green space (e.g. arable fields) which is where they’ll forage for earthworms. Having said that, they’re not that picky, and anywhere 
where woodland (or any form of cover) meets open land is the best place to start looking.

First, go directly to where the woodland meets the open area, as this is normally where they’ll prefer to build the bulk of their sett. Look into the trees, for large ‘ant hills’: piles of often sandy-colored earth that have been excavated, known as spoil. They can stand out and be quite large if part of an active sett too.

Make sure to try and be as thorough as possible, walk around as much of the border as you can, scan the trees and scrub for those little humps, it does work too, as the first sett I found was only because I noticed a little pile of sandy earth in some bushes and decided to investigate.

A less-defined path made by a badger, after following this it lead me straight to

the sett. Also, note it's an almost perfect habitat.

Signs further away from the sett:

Entrance to a badger sett-badger setts have a D

shaped entrance as shown here.

If you’ve had no luck, then it’s time to zoom out and look for signs that can be found further away from the sett. The first of these is a path or run. Being such low-slung and hairy animals, badgers are a bit like the brooms of the forest, and once they’ve walked along a certain route a few times, they wear away the vegetation and some of the ground. These paths can be quite long, although they are much more obvious closer to the sett, where they’re used a lot more.

The most obvious are completely devoid of any vegetation and usually have the top layer of the earth too, exposing the lighter soil underneath. But lookout for the less-used ones too, where the vegetation has been parted. Generally, badger runs are about 30cm wide 
(from my experience) and roughly 30-40cm tall if it's been made through thick vegetation.

This can help separate them from paths made from other animals like deer and foxes, which are often a lot less defined, and much narrower (especially with foxes). Another way to find out is to follow it, especially if it leads into a woodland, as deer ones often stop once they reach cover, but badger ones should end at a sett. Don’t stress out over this too much though, as they’ll often share paths and there are much more reliable signs to look for.

Another path parallel to a sett in the bushes behind

it.

One of these are tracks, as badgers can travel over 22km foraging in just one night, so it’s a good indicator far away from the sett. Their tracks are medium-sized, with a broad, stout interdigital (middle) pad and long claw marks are often seen. The main way to tell them apart from something like a fox or a cat though is to look at the toes: badgers are the only ones to have five toes, everything else will have four or less (unless it has some sort of mutation but it’ll still look different).

Another sign that can be found quite far from the sett, although not always the most reliable, are the marks left from where the badgers have been foraging. Because so much of their diet is made up of earthworms, they do a lot of digging around, leaving very messy areas 
of turned over mud and roots, but sometimes they can be quite distinctive.

Remember, FIVE toes, no more, no

less.

Unlike rabbits and foxes, when badgers dig, they’ll normally make quite a round conical hole, matching the shape of their nose, whereas rabbits and foxes normally leave a rectangular hole, but this isn’t consistent.

The badger who did this scat had clearly eaten

a lot of worms.

Sometimes accompanying these are latrines. A warning to other roaming badgers and predators that they’re stepping into someone else’s land, they’re frequently made at the border of a badger clan’s territory, sometimes quite a distance from their setts. Being very hygienic, badgers will create a little hole beforehand, and from looking at the scat itself, you can also quite easily determine what they’ve been eating. After eating a lot of worms, the scat is very runny and smooth, whereas if they’ve been eating something like beetles it’ll be dark, and any remains like exoskeletons should be quite obvious.

Getting closer…

The closer you get to a badger sett, the more of these signs you’ll start to see, and the more concentrated they’ll get. One of these signs is badger fur, which can be found a little way away from the sett, but a lot of the time it’ll be within a few hundred meters if not closer.

A classic little foraging sign made

by a badger-note the shape of it

and how it matches the shape

of a badger's nose. 

Some typical fur from a badgers back, although you

probably won't find this much on one fence.

The commonest type of fur found is the stuff from a badger’s back and sides, as they squeeze under fencing or scratch themselves on a piece of wood, and while appearing grey, each individual hair is actually black and white. Most of the time, it’s about 2/5 black in the middle, 2/5 white on one end, then on the other around 1/5 white. While some dog and cat breeds have similar looking fur, badger fur will usually be slightly bent, and if you roll it between your fingers it’ll feel very jagged and angular, but most cats and dogs will have near-cylindrical fur. It’s also more common than you might think, so be sure to check any wire fencing in the area you’re searching for badgers in.




Is the sett active or not?

Assuming you’ve found the sett, you might wonder if there are actually badgers using it, because a surprising amount of the time badger setts will be found vacated, for whatever reason. There are lots of things to look for here that tell you this, although I’ll only mention some.

 The first and probably the one that most tells you it’s inactive is how clean it is since an active badger sett will have a nice wide, open entrance, clear of any vegetation. However, if you find a badger sett with plants growing in front of it or inside it, it shows you it hasn't been used in a while.

Now, something to look for in an active badger sett is bedding. Being the germaphobes that they are, (not really, otherwise they

Some typical bedding left on the spoil infront of a 

badger sett entrance.

wouldn’t live in holes in mud) they regularly take out their old bedding (normally grass/hay) and dump it outside the sett entrance, ready to drag in some clean stuff. Look around the entrances to the sett, especially on the spoil heap in front of it, for any hay that’s been left there. There can be quite a lot sometimes too.

A nice sized badger sett entrance, notice there's

nothing obstructing it, and part of a run to the left

leading into it.

Although they are clean animals, badgers do (like all of us) smell pretty bad sometimes, and sometimes when around a sett entrance for long enough, you’ll get the old and quite musty smell of a badger. The good thing is it’s very distinctive from the smell of foxes, which smell bizarrely similar to someone smoking weed.

Badger, Fox, or Rabbit?

 Badgers, rabbits, and foxes all live in underground tunnel systems, and sometimes even share one, like one I found that had both foxes and badgers bunking together. But more often than not, they’ll have their own designated ones.

Out of the three, badgers usually have the biggest entrances, being such large animals,

Always follow the paths and you will be rewarded.

and the hole is normally shaped like a ‘D’ on its side, while fox ones are normally (not always) a bit smaller, won’t have that characteristic ‘D’ shape and won’t be as clean of plants. Outside fox earths, you’ll often also find the remains of prey they’ve killed, but outside badger setts, you’ll only find some straw.


Rabbit warrens, on the other hand, can be a similar shape and size to badger’s sett and can have a large spoil heap in front of them too. Usually, though the best way to tell if it’s the entrance to a rabbit warren is to look inside, a badger sett will stay consistently large and go straight down, whereas a rabbit warren will often get narrower straight away, or steer off to the right or left.

Hopefully, this was useful and happy badger hunting!