Bill Oddie's badger cull-busters on patrol looking for wounded animals after they have been shot

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Theyre an improbable bunch. A spinster, a seamstress, a sculptress... and Bill Oddie. Crouched beneath a Gloucestershire hill at 3am, their head-torches light up a surreal landscape of scattered peanuts, Smarties and a smear of congealed blood in the dirt at their feet.

Only their hi-vis jackets emblazoned with the words Wounded Badger Patrol offer a clue to their mission. This is Team Badger, here in force to fight the cull.

The nuts and chocolate have been left by hunters to bait the 25 badgers in this one sett. The blood left by a shot male crawling home to die marks one of the many entrances. Bill makes short work of the peanuts.

You have to wee on them, he says matter-of-factly as the three women avert their eyes. It puts the badgers right off and renders the bait redundant. But, for some reason, only mens wee works.

Game spinster Edith tonights her first-ever shift heaves a giddy sigh of relief as she quickly re-buttons her late fathers WWII great coat.

Seven nights a week, from dusk until dawn, the WBP a Mums Army made up of mostly middle-aged women patrols the beleaguered setts of Middle England armed only with binoculars, biscuits and sensible shoes.

Farmers claim badgers are infecting their cattle with tuberculosis and so last year the government approved a six-week trial in Gloucestershire and Somerset to kill 2,000 badgers.

Despite being extended by a fortnight, the first attempt was a failure. The hired guns a motley crew of farm workers and ex-soldiers barely made half their quota.

The League Against Cruel Sports (the charity behind the WBP) claims the indiscriminate cull is, at best, pointless, but this year theyre trying again with a few days of the trial left to run.

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Bill Oddie's badger cull-busters on patrol looking for wounded animals after they have been shot