badger behavior/spawns

[FJBaguazhang]

the wiki says badgers are shy and run from humans- bt they also visit the settlement. my question is, how common are badgers? i am taking to believing quite common actually.

ive seen some awful strange badgers in my time; random sleepy badgers particularly on open mires just standing out in the open waiting to be clubbed and chased, and also curious nosey badgers repeatedly raiding the shelter looking for food. must be that RNG- just like when wolves decide to start battling when their outnumbered 10-1 or when stags getting chased turn the other way and fight your dogs or run back past. its funny when they start playing games with your settlement looking for berries and then leaving only when you get hostile.

given that badgers lay tracks upon a given trapping site if you stay active, it shouldnt be impossible to lay some traps for them. but my question is just how common are they? i read elsewhere for every tile, depending on the area youll have a badger, a couple foxes, and so on. it seems like those small game animals with expensive furs take real skill getting. even if you ride around on skis in winter around mires/lakes you never seem to run into them in the open. its only when they migrate that it feels like you run into them crossing a mire or something but always so far from your trapsite. it also seems to take a high trapping skill- catching them with small deadfalls seems near impossible unless your trapping is high (im assuming above 75). i only catch htem in big deadfalls which at  the moment are uneconomical to setup.

my question it, just how common are badgers? beavers, ermines etc? has anyone had consistent luck in getting them or one species? ive yet to catch a herd of beaver, or badgers, bagging them all,

if some regions favour particular anaimals (ie seals in south). does it follow then that certain terrain configuartions favour animals; ie Bears in Caves, and then, maybe pole cats and beavers on islands in between rivers. wouldnt we see certain species thriving in certain environments because of natural protections and opportunities. or maybe they lay low wherever they are. how common are badgers?

[PALU]

From my subjective experience they're not very common, probably just a notch more common than bears, but when you've got one raiding your farm plots they can cause serious damage (I probably lost a couple of hundred tiles worth when counting several re-plantings to one before I finally managed to corner and kill it).

I haven't seen beavers much, but did get a group around one of my character's homesteads and eventually killed most of them. I fairly frequently get ermines and similar small predators pestering my characters when they work at their homesteads (a whole lot of barking and sighting interruptions).

[Birdana]

i have traps of all sizes and badgers spawning in every so often in my hunting grounds (a fairly large island) its been about 1 full game year and none of them have walked into any of my traps. its pretty annoying

[PALU]

Have you baited the traps? Badgers eat just about anything, so berries and meat ought to work, and I suspect turnips as well.

[Birdana]

a variety of different bait. raw fish, birds eggs, dried meat, raw meat, raw spoiled meat, rye grains, turnips, bones,berries

[PALU]

I've never seen eggs to be useful as bait, and spoiled meat is poor bait (carnivores will eat it if trapped, but it probably doesn't have much of an attraction). Bones are probably not eaten by anything but dogs.

I know I've had trouble with badgers not getting into my traps properly, and I've ended up cornering them most of the time. However, the baiting should be good, and there is no known penalty to multi baiting. A low trapping skill seems to result in a greater risk of the trap getting a high repulsion factor.

Trap line techniques tend to work to either get prey or at least keep them away, i.e. a line of traps. Big game can be kept out with trap fences, while smaller ones just run through the fence, so you need a complete line (where trees also act as blockers against non fliers).