The badger moniker comes from lead miners that initially settled the Wisconsin territory. They often didn't even bother building homes at first and just lived in their wildcat lead mines, like a badger.
I'm in new mexico and saw a badger crossing the road while I was driving to work. It stopped in the middle of the road, turned towards me and waited, like it was deciding whether or not to fuck up the large metal thing coming towards it. Then slowly turned and continued on it's way when it decided I wasn't worth it. No fear whatsoever.
I had a huge buck do that to me once. It was like 3am and the thing just casually walked out into the road in front of my truck and looked at me like "......what?"
yeah 3 am riding my little motorcycle through an appalachian holler so slowly because the mist was overwhelming and blinding and suddenly i was surrounded by a couple deer and a giant buck... i was like i don't know if they can accelerate faster than me but i'll try. i made it out, but if i hadn't been so slow, i would have crashed into a deer or crashed from swerving