Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Porcupines and dogs

Do you folks have a shoot on sight policy with porcupines? I didn't, until today. It would depend on the circumstances. They can be entertaining and the wife and grandkids like to see them. Our two springer spaniels caught up with a small one this morning. The older, two year old dog who is usually pretty mellow about most things grabbed the porcupine hard enough to kill it. Needless to say, that resulted in a mouthful and muzzle full of little quills. We removed countless quills with my Leatherman, then headed back to the truck a mile away and drove directly to the doggie ER. Both dogs needed sedation for the quill removal. The vet said the older dog sure had a lot of quills in him -- this after I had removed at least half of them! Back home now, $1100 later and both dogs are sleeping it off. Now we just worry about whether or not there will be problematic quills that were not removed.

Dang!

1100?

But yes...kill em all.

Nope. Can’t kill them all. All my dog, up one have had a snoot full. Only one went back for seconds. None have been bad enough I couldn’t do the job in the field.

You take your dog and lift them upside down with their feet elevated. It puts them to sleep. You clip the tip of the quill and remove and repeat. I have done a lot of this over my life.

Pulled countless quills.
Never had a dog that learned better.
Never had a vet pull quills for me.

Not sure what benefit porcupines are but I feel sure the world would be just fine without them.

Have pulled quills and had dogs with so many broken off so deep they had to go to the vet.
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Kill them all

Can you describe how you put the dog to sleep a little bit more? Never heard of this and not quite getting it.

Shoot on sight. Not even a question.

Shoot all I see if I can. If they come around once and you let them walk, they'll be back.

Skunks and porcupines.

Never put them to sleep, but clipping the tip off the quill will allow them to be exreacted easiky.

Never seen a porcupine but 1100 to remove quills sounds ridiculous.

We killed a moose last fall that was splashing in the creek below camp. We thought he was playing until we saw the right front foot with a bunch of quills in it...

Longtime family friend had his canoe yoke eaten by porkies to get the salt. From then on Len carried salt to soak sticks in. He propped up big rocks, logs, anything handy...

Killed several when I quail hunted, dog jumping on one is bad news

I hate them with a passion, pulled them out of cattle, donkeys, dogs. I hunt them daily in winter time when they are in the bare trees stripping bark , amazing how big they get. I have tried to figure out why God made them !

The $1100 was for both dogs -- no group discount here. I thought I could get the quills out of the younger dog, they were mostly on her lips and nose. I've done that for other dogs many times. No dice here; the quills were so small and she was so squirmy that my wife and I just couldn't manage it.

Sixty or so years ago they would chomp on stuff under my folks camp. I killed some with my Savage 24; the .410 with slugs was very effective. Back then, if you chopped the head off the porcupine and took it to the town clerk, you'd get a $0.50 bounty. It seemed like big money to a kid in those days.

The say, they taste like pork.

It's the lactating females that crave salt.

Just shoot the dogs and leave the porcupines alone. Much less $