I find it funny that its top predator, the badger, is also protected, despite being very common.
Kind of sad that people don't hitch anymore. You come across all sorts of stuff and people. My little brother was in a garage band and wrote a song called "Stick Out Your Thumb And Have Some Fun", which I liked.
There's something about looking personable, well-groomed and attentive, and still being ignored by a succession of mostly empty vehicles that takes a toll on one's ego :(
Good on you for rescuing the hedgehog though!
I know, it was a bit soul destroying. In my experience, the thing to do was not to try too hard (a bit of Zen here, perhaps). I remember being dropped at a roundabout outside Doncaster UK where there were already a couple of other guys, which is usually the kiss of death for all concerned. So I went up the road's embankment, laid down and slept for an hour or so - it was a sunny day. When I woke the other guys had got lifts and I stuck out my thumb and got one too.
The thing about hitching is that you want a little money in your pocket so that if you really do get stuck somewhere you can maybe get a bus to somewhere better, and you don't feel too powerless and miserable. Also, hitch with a pretty woman - me and my ex-wife hitched Edinburgh-Yorkshire-Wales and back, doing camping. The last bit back to Edinburgh was in a Rolls Royce!
Re. public transport, indeed the occasion when I tried hitchhiking was after missing the one of the two twice-a-day buses on a recent journey of mine from a remote village. However, I eventually caught a succession of unlikely connections further on; I ended up arriving earlier than expected even without successfully hitchhiking, so all's well that ends well!
Baiting is obviously horrible though. And we in the UK also have vile "sports" such as hare-coursing. But we have more or less got rid of fox hunting.
(Half)joking aside, I do understand that Lincolnshire has a much worse problem than my native Welsh border country. Our smaller fields and undulating ground make coursing much more difficult. We also don't have the density of hares.
Whilst baiting is a persistent sub culture, it is extremely niche. I live in a country area, and my life puts me in contact with the shooting and farming communities. I heard of baiting once ever. It is much more niche than other countryside crimes like stealing GPS units off tractors, sheep rustling, poaching etc. None of which attract attention from the public.
I don't want to see animals killed, but the UK is a highly managed landscape. The badgers success has been a disaster for ground nesting birds (especially lapwings, or peewits as we call them locally) , and hedgehogs. This makes me sad.
Then there is the issue of TB. Because the populace, as you put it, are so fond of badgers there has been this appalling censorship of the debate about this issue. In fact for years we had all kinds of groups pretending that there was no link between TB in badgers and TB in cows. Lets have some facts. If a dairy cow catches TB from a badger then it will be killed by the government. The herd will get constant checks and animals will keep getting killed for having antibodies present in their bloodstream. This is because the spread of TB must be stopped at all costs! That makes me sad. If a badger gets TB, it will likely infect its whole sett. It is likely to die of the disease. You can't kill them though, because badgers must be protected at all costs. I spy a logical inconsistency in those two positions.