Solved: mystery of astonishing levels of activity. Amorous boar in mating frenzy. 7th February 2026

I'm still trying to make sense of the footage I have.  The trail cams shot between five to 8 weeks worth over 4 1/2 days!!!! No wonder my trail cams ran out of charge.

Anyway, the danger in reviewing the footage is to anthropomorphise the badgers' behaviour. What look suspiciously like rape is in actual fact normal badger behaviour. The mating looks particularly brutal, but it's normal.

On many occasions a sow will see off a boar, chasing him out of the main sett area.

I still can't work out how many boars and sows there are. The main sett is used by our original boar and sow. But I sometimes get the feeling that other sows and boars visit the main sett. Could this be the beginning of a super sett?

Anyway, footage appear at the end of this entry.

These next bits from earlier

I found that there were a further 2000 images from a trail cam that faced the front of the main sett entrance. A review of the first 2000 revealed what was happening at Badger Manor this past week. A frenzied bout of mating by the boar. My god, they keep at it for ages. I think the poor sow was getting tired out. She would disappear or run away for a bit, while the boar searches frantically for her.

Now I saw this same behaviour last year, at approximately the same time - though I think earlier in January. The sow didn't produce cubs, she appeared to be young, possibly less than a year old, thus probably wasn't ready to implant.

So, does this year's slightly later period of mating, where the sow appears in season, mean that she has given birth to cubs. Time, as they say, will tell. April to May will reveal the answer.

I'll keep the text below as a record of how this week's story unfolds.

This teaser continues, I'm afraid. I started reviewing footage from last week with the knowledge that one trail cam had run out of charge - which I expected. It took me some time to realise that the trail cam in question had been triggered almost 750 times before it ran out of juice! It ran out on Wednesday - I swap SD cards on a Saturday, normally.

So now I am copying 2000 files off one SD card. Noticed I had 1000 images from the week before to process, and will have to check the other SD cards from the other trail cams to see if they have had similar number of triggers.

I can't really work out what is going on, but suspect a couple of other badgers may be visiting the sett and possibly attempting to either join our existing pair or to oust them. Though it may simply be that our existing pair have been extremely active during the unusually warm, albeit damp, spell we've been experiencing.

A teaser whilst I try and make sense of the mountain of photos and videos gathered this past week.

I can't really tell what is happening at Badger Manor: whether it is good, bad or normal.  More will follow as I try and make sense of the images.

We'll start footage from here. I noticed that sometimes mating would go on until quite late in the morning, with the sun up. Here is a rare day time video. Sorry for the quality of the trail cam's imagery. The trail cam has been out for almost a year.

This video happened a little after almost an hour of mating! The sow sees off the boar, or at least sees him off the property.

In this video, a boar comes a courting. He does so by churring away, hoping to entice the sow out.

But then, for whatever reason, the sow chases off the boar. This happens on numerous occasions throughout the week. As a human, you think the boar is forcing himself on the sow, but then get an almighty surprise when the sow sees off the much larger boar.

I think a boar has come to the main sett entrance to see if a sow is in there. Then, for some reason, he goes to the left of the main sett and churrs away in his 'mating' call. Next thing we see is him flying out of the sett area at a rate of knots.

I am not sure if a boar comes out of the sett or a sow. In any case, the badger follows the boar, presumably to see him off the premises.

Regular readers may notice that I keep updating this post. Well, not only has rather a lot been happening (I have had to plough through almost 5000 pieces of imagery), but I am also limited to 10 uploads a day to youtube - that's 10 in any 24 hour period, not 10 each calendar day.

Anyway, in this video, I am not sure whether our sow is seeing off a boar or another sow.

Action now switches to the lower left sett entrance. All three entrances I have trail cams on showed a lot of action.

​We start with a boar (I think) churring away hoping to entice the sow out.

All three sett entrances I know about were in use this week. I can't work out if our sow is using all three in attempt to avoid an amorous boar or more, or do we have one or more other sows investigating the area.

In this video, it appears as if a boar is exiting this sett hole, but I'm not sure. It's head suggests a boar, but its body does not exhibit the massive size of our normal boar.

My usual setup for a trail cam is for it to take 3 photos and a video. The reason for this is that trail cams take roughly .5 seconds to go from triggering to photographing, but as much as 3 seconds to go from triggering to videoing. All action can be missed if I simply set my trail cams to videoing.

Unfortunately, my Bargarbou trail cams buck the trend of taking photos first and then videos. Thus, I am not sure how much action they miss.

However, I have an Usogood trail cam trained on the lower left sett. This, otherwise useless trail cam, does at least take photos first before videoing. Thus, it was able to capture this sequence before videoing. By the time its videoing kicked in, both badgers had disappeared!! They charged off to the right of this video. All it got was some small Holly twigs swaying too and fro, having been disturbed by the badgers flight.

I think this is an amorous boar trying to mate with a sow. Conversely it may be two sows fighting. The key point is that animal interaction can take place so fast, it may be missed by an incorrectly set up trail cam

We continue this mega update by shifting to the upper left sett entrance. Very little tends to happen up here. A badger will occasionally pass through or use the sett entrance.

This week, however, there was a lot of activity. I can't work out if some of this activity is due to our sow avoiding the amorous intentions of one or more boars, or if our sow is seeing off another sow.

In this first video, we see that a sow has been spooked by something to the right of this video. What cannot be determined is if this is our incumbent sow running away from an amorous boar or if this sow is an interloper being seen off by our incumbent sow.

Moving to the next interaction, I can't work out if there are two sows here. One sow, who's back we  only see, appears to move away to our left, when another sow appears suddenly to the right with body language suggesting she is after something.  Alternatively, it could simply be the first badger turning through 180 degrees underneath and behind the trail cam.

Again, another indeterminate piece of action. Do we have two sows here?

In these final two videos, we see a badger using the upper left sett entrances. I wonder if it could be our incumbent so trying to avoid an amorous boar. Though it could be a new sow looking for a sett. I am more inclined to believe the former explanation.