Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada Porcupines

When I was a kid my springer spaniel jumped over a log while pheasant hunting and landed right on a porcupine. $1000 later and 50 or so quills taken out of his lungs, he was on the mend.

They're still plentiful in WY, ID and MT, plus I see a lot in AK. I shoot every one that I see in my bird areas. I generally leave them alone in areas that I hunt big game in.

Usually when we go for a drive we see a couple flattened on the road. A few years ago while deer hunting from a tree stand I had one climb up an adjoining tree. He ended up about 10 or 15 feet away at eye level. I wanted to shoot him but didn't because I didn't want to spook any deer in the area.

Jim

If you have nice trees on your property and let the quillypigs alone they will destroy every tree they can. Seems like garbage trees and brush they leave alone. I don't see how they multiply so fast,read where they only give birth to 1 a year.

During the 1930's, my Dad worked in the bush around Port Arthur, ON. He told me the porcupines would eat the wood boxes that the salt meat came in at their camp.

I have eaten the leg meat from one. As teenagers we used to go out to a bush a mile or two from town. We boiled the legs along with our potatoes and other stuff. We were "roughing it".

I've read, it is the lactating females that crave salt. The bark diet is so long on potassium their kidneys flush out the sodium with the excess potassium.

They seem to be expanding their range in Central Texas, there were none when I was a kid, to now becoming fairly common. Saw roadkill ones out to West Texas. Seems odd for them to be in areas with few large trees, but they are present even in the Chihuahua Desert areas. They are hard on axe handles and boots, fortunately have not had a dog run in.

In the last two weeks, I've seen 3 freshly squished ones on the roads here on the Kenai.

For some reason, I didn't see any all summer long. Seeking new range? Getting kicked out by mama?

Breeding season, probably. ("I'm dying to get laid....." ).

You haven't heard anything during sex if you haven't heard porcupines going at it!

We have plenty of them in SE Alaska. Maybe we can arrange an exchange, say porcupine for moose?

Me too Ted, seen enough horses and dogs get into em, they die on sight. Hard on Jack firs too. Used to get $25 a pop back in high school for a right front paw from a couple timber companies here

In college I worked summers USFS trail crew, first Idaho, then Alaska.

The helicopter pilot dropped a sling load of our gear somewhere along Resurection trail, out of Hope, on the Kenai Peninsula, including our personal gear. We went looking for it for 2 days but never found it.

What we did find was dozens of porcupine pelts, belly up, on the bench above the trail between Hope and Wolf Creek. Something was living well, and was very very good at it. Lynx or wolverine probably, as we don't have - or we are not supposed to have - fishers here.

I'm 51, they were around here a bit all my life.
Never saw one, but once in a great while a dog got a graceful.
Summer of 1998, all of a sudden I was seeing them hit on the road everywhere
here. Odd. Then saw a few in the woods, blasted them destructive buggers.

Haven't seen one in quite awhile now.

Here in Saskatchewan they are common and often plentiful. More common in the open aspen parkland and grassland prairie than they are in the bush, don't know why. I have to agree that the population seems to fluctuate, and they are currently at somewhat lower numbers than usual. But we still have plenty. Just got back from a pheasant hunting trip near the US border, and a friend's dog got into one in a cattail slough. We thought he was pointing a pheasant and sent him in for the flush. Oops. At my home in central Saskatchewan I am plagued with the varmints. Destroying fruit trees, oaks, pines, anything exotic, and hard to grow. I shoot those local ones. But I tend to leave them alone in the bush up north. The fishers need to eat too!

Plenty in PA. They are actually pretty tasty.

Skin carefully.

-Jake

I always see them every year on Stone sheep hunts here in northern BC. It’s amazing how high up in the mountains they go. It’s common for us to come across them way up in the rocks going up and over passes.
Came back to sheep camp one night and one was inside my floorless Tipo tent. There was one outside the tent so I thought I better check inside as well. He backed himself up as far as he could away from us in the tent. I had to open the front of the tipi wide open, then gently push on him with a hiking pole from outside the back of the tent to coax him into leaving. Then I stayed on his tail for quite a ways to keep him going as he made a typical slow porcupine escape, chirping as he went. He had just started chewing on the valve of my air mattress, but luckily no holes in anything. I don’t think I could ever hurt one. Got a soft spot for them I guess.

I read somewhere years back about putting out salt blocks. Since then I keep a salt block near camp and it takes care of them for good. The article I read said that they'll consume large enough amounts of the salt and will kill them. We still get bothered buy them but very minor compared to what it was.

I was taught as a kid to never kill one. It was a easy source of meat if you ever stranded.
I believe few are shot or killed on the road but they will chew plywood or a cabin step( if it is used as a urinal) tires( if urinated on ) Backpacks( if they have been sweated on)
I don't know why the previously abundant porcupine has nearly disappeared around here

"I always see them every year on Stone sheep hunts here in northern BC. It’s amazing how high up in the mountains they go."

They feed on a kit of stuff besides tree bark, which is their winter food. Mostly.

That reminds me - We were hunting for caribou behind Tustemena Lake a few years ago. My son and I spotted a Grizzly/brown bear grazing on a grassy alpine slope maybe 600 yards away.

I put the spotting scope on it.

HA! It was the biggest porky I've ever seen, but nowhere near bear size. Very deceptive...but I still felt foolish.

I heard of one instance where someone shot a griz in bad evening light at "about 200 yards". When they went over there, they could not find it..

Next morning they found a blown up porky at about 100.

Taste like chicken?

While grouse hunting in ME yesterday we saw two. Our host said that he'd killed *54* of them in the past 18 months between his small chunk of land and a larger one that his neighbor owns. Neighbor said to *please* kill every one he saw on his land. Total land less than 80 acres When I asked him why, he explained that when there are too many of them in a small area they end up killing lots of pine trees, some quite old. He said that if I didn't have my two labs out with us he'd have killed them both as they sat nervously looking down at us from the tops of the trees they'd climbed up.

I'd like to find one that tasted good. They always tasted like turpentine, and it was the one animal that we cautioned our survival students not to eat unless they were really desperate.