Angler fights off attacking badger

At first, Ron Lancour thought the creature in the lake was a waterfowl.

Lancour was fishing nearly a kilometre from shore on Sheridan Lake in inland British Columbia. The lake was mostly quiet midday last Friday, but something was swimming toward the front of his boat.

During the coming minutes, Lancour learned his visitor was not a bird. Nor was it calm. It was a badger, snarling at the snout, heading straight for Lancour and his fishing lines.

“He was coming in my boat whether I liked it or not, and he was telling me to get out,” Lancour, 70, said Wednesday.

Lancour is an avid outdoorsman. In his heyday, he trapped bears for the city of Kelowna, B.C., where he lives. These days, he prefers to fish, often at Sheridan Lake, where the rainbow trout are plentiful.

He did not expect to confront a badger. An hour into the fishing trip, he was half-asleep, expending just enough energy to check on the lines dangling out the back of the boat. Suddenly, he was under siege.

“I just glanced to the front of my boat, and that’s when I seen this critter swimming in the water,” Lancour said. “It kind of disappeared from sight. I couldn’t see it as it went around the side of the boat.

“I went to the side to look over, and then I heard him come snarling over the transom, between the motors. Right away, as soon as I saw his face, I knew what it was . I know badgers, and I didn’t want him in the boat with me.”

Lancour had a few advantages. He said he is quick-witted when it comes to dealing with animals, having encountered nuisance wildlife throughout his years as a trapper.

While the badger was big — about 10 kilograms based on Lancour’s frantic estimate — it could not, of course, wield tools.

“I reached and grabbed my net, which has a long handle, and I turned around and tried shoving him with the handle into the water,” Lancour said. But the animal started chewing the handle.

Poking at the badger would not suffice, so Lancour knew he had to stun it. Only a forceful smack on the nose would send it tumbling off the boat.

But even as he defended himself, Lancour managed to keep a broader concern in mind: There are only 200 or so badgers left in B.C. They are classified as endangered and inadvertently killing one, even as it tried to maul him, would be a shame.

“I didn’t want to just really bat him one,” Lancour said. “I was pushing on him with a paddle, and I just about got him in the water, and he came back again. He was gaining on me. I just gave him a little harder rap on the nose and I broke my paddle. But I was able to push him in the water.”

The ordeal was done — and then, just as quickly, it wasn’t. The badger swam around the back of the boat. It clambered aboard again. Lancour, holding the shaft of his splintered oar, said he finally knocked the animal away. He steered off, at speed. The badger, defeated, swam to land.