Apparently, to a thread I found, this behavior is normal if your only doing 1/16 steps with your motor, and printing at low speeds. So I replaced my stepper driver with a DRV 8825 which luckily I had in hand. Now the extruder is set to 1/32 steps. Re calibrated the extruder, and then tested. The damn extruder still can't pull filament in micro steps.
Could my Bulldog Lite be bad? This is very frustrating.