Wisconsin is called "the Badger State." The old story goes that miners of the lead region in the 1820s and 1830s became known as "badgers" because they lived and mined in crude hillside dugouts that resembled the habitat of actual badgers. Whether that is true or not, the nickname stuck.

The University of Wisconsin in Madison began to use the badger name in the 1880s. By 1949 the University adopted an upright, barrel-chested mascot named Bucky who since has become the most famous badger of all.