Fred the Badger

Fred the badger lived on a shelf about eye level as you walked in the barn .
Every year I was aloud to go elk hunting on this ranchers property in the big piney Wyoming .
This rancher spread was about 30 miles long by 10 miles wide , and we always got a elk ..
The rancher is who had the barn with Fred just inside the door .
One year when I went out to the ranch the farmer/rancher had his cheek all bandaged up ?
I asked the rancher what happened to his face ? He kind of laughed and said You don't blow in Fred's face.

I didn't know who Fred was ,, and didn't understand what was so funny ..
The Rancher went on to say that Fred the Badger had lived in the barn for 5 or 6 years .
He lived on a shelve right by the barn door .
The rancher said Fred was never violent , but you know you just want to pet him .
After the rancher had walked in and out of the barn a few hundred times with Fred there the rancher got pretty friendly like talking to Fred while he walked in and out of the barn ..
Well one day the rancher thought he would out of the blue blow in Fred's face ,,, moral of the story don't blow in Fred the badger's face ..

 

This was back in 1980 to 1985
You could do a elk draw , but back then you could also buy general elk tag for 25.00 bucks.
They had I believe a late elk hunt at the reserve in Jacksons Hole .
I believe that was a 500.00 tag and normally the out of state hunters bought those .
The 25.00 $ tag was normally it was a bull only tag .And the tag was good for several areas in Wyoming .
My friend bought me my tags every year as a birthday present .
You could draw out for moose every 5 years .
You got a total of seven antelope . 15.00 $ for the first three and 7.50 per antelope after that .
The deer/ and bear tag came together .

 

LOL when I was thirteen or fourteen I tried stabbing a badger with a steak knife while the badger had its head in a new hole it was digging .
The badgers skin was so tough/thick it bent the steak knifes blade .
The badger never turned around and kept on digging right up to the point I tried stabbing the badger with a pitch fork ...
Well that got the badgers attention .. three of us all ran in the back door of this ranch hands house .
The badgers was clawing at the back door for about 30 seconds then wandered back into a corn field .

I was in my service truck a Peterbilt out in the desert I was taking this dirt road that went through these ranches that was a short cut from one gold mine to another when a eagle and a badger was fighting it out right in the middle of this dirt road right in front of me about 20 feet away .
Look to me it was a small badger and the eagle had plans on eating the badger .
The eagle took the badger about 100 yards in the air and dropped the badger right in front of my service truck .
The baby badger didn't win the fight ..

another time
I had a eagle crash through the wind shield of my service truck ..
The eagle landed kind of in the passengers seat ( a live ) I had a stack of clean coveralls between the seats so I stacked a shit load of my coveralls on the eagle flailing all over the cab of my service truck as I am doing 90MPH down the winter road ..
I took the Eagle to the fish and games office ..
Eagle was to busted up and died .

I also hit a turkey buzzard once with another service truck ..
That bird was huge and the wing span covered the whole wind shield ,, scared me ..

 

I was kind of thinking just leave Fred the Badger alone .
Might be more of a harmonious outcome .