I have only called two badgers in my 40+ years of calling. The first one was called in with a closed reed dying rabbit call. The second one was a badger I saw amble into the prairie dog town I was shooting in. I have told this story before and posted the pictures, but I'll spin the story again and add the photos.
I had stopped in the shade of a small grove of trees out in the PD town to rest and get a drink of water. He came up out of a creek bed and walked up to where I had just got done shooting several prairie dogs.
He picked up one of the dead PDs and started burrowing into a prairie dog mound about 100 to 125 yards north of me and he was on the mound where the arrow is pointing.
I had my little Kodak 4800 digital camera with the 3x optical zoom and 2x digital zoom. Not nearly enough power for good photos at that distance. I figured I'd try calling him in a little closer, but I didn't have any calls with me so I improvised by cupping my hand and doing some squeaks and kisses on the forefinger of my cupped hand. He looked, but didn't come any closer.
I decided that the only way to get a closer photo would be to sneak around to the down wind side of him on a little sidehill just to the WNW of where he was digging into the prairie dog mound. I moved up there. Here's a photo I took after all the action was done showing the badger's location and where I sat to take the photos. I had been in that little grove of three or four trees you can see on the extreme right-hand side of the photo just above the text explaining about the bush I sat alongside.
When I got to my spot, I did some lip squeaks and he came up out of the hole he had dug and looked up toward me:
I kept on lip squeaking and snapping photos as he started coming up my way.
He was heading on a path that would either take him right into my lap or slightly to the north side of me where he would be on the down wind side of my location. When he got to maybe 10 to 12 yards from me he stopped and I snapped a couple of photos. He must have heard the camera noise and was looking straight at me on the last photo.
I spoke a couple of words to him something like, "Hey, Mr. Badger, how are you doing today?" and he immediately turned tail and waddled back down to the mound he had dug his hidey hole into. That was about as close as I want to come to a live badger. It was a fun time for me to be able to call this guy in for some photos.
