Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada Porcupines

Lots here in NE Alberta aswell. Only one that likes them around here is the local vet. $$$

They seem like a form of cactus rat. No offense intended to the real cactus rat if there is one. I sure hope we never see them in NW Misery. Be Well, RustyZipper.

Its amazing they can penetrate and pop tires with their quills

I have a cabin in the Ottawa Nat Forest on the west side of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The cabin has been there 15 years and I never had a problem until about a year ago. I was under the cabin looking at something and noticed one had chewed a hole the size of a volley ball in the side of the plywood battery box for my solar electric system. I do a check of everything outside the cabin on my first trip here every spring and had never even seen a toothmark before. I'm sure it was a porky because he visited that night and I got a good look with a flashlight. I have the cabin in large part because I hunt grouse. One day last fall I noticed the dog was sniffing around something but wasn't exactly acting birdy. When I went over to look it was a porcupine about half up the inside of a hollow tree. The dog had one, one-inch quill sticking straight our from her nose. Fortunately the quill basically fell out when I touched it. But the dog sure didn't want anything else to do with that porcupine. That was the first dog/porky encounter I've had around here in about 20 years of bird hunting with 3 dogs 20-30 days a year. Folks who live around have been saying they're "coming back." The trend is definitely not in the right direction.