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.
'
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 $

No porcupines in the marsh.

I had two dogs encounter a porcupine while camping up on the Little Lost back in the 90s. Lips and noses, one dog much worse than the other. I held the dogs while my uncle tugged away at the quills with a pair of channelocks. I thought their lips would come off before the quills came out. Poor dogs...they had ways of bringing disaster upon themselves, though. Especially out in the wild.

Doggy ERs are all a rip off, but they know suckers like us will pay it to help their pooches. Luckily we don't have those Prickly 'Possums around here.

Have hunted considerably over various dogs over the decades. The dogs that immediately tried to bite porcupines were all pointing dogs, ranging from GSHs to Viszlas--and all of them bit porkies the next time they found one. One of them (a GSH) was taken immediately to a vet to be sedated and have the quills pulled, but one was evidently so deeply imbedded that it was missed--and eventually worked its way into the dog's heart--killing him during a hunt.

Haven't seen such aggression from flushing dogs, especially retrievers. They've sniffed the porky, and if they got any quills at all evidently learned from it, and never got close to one again. (This has often NOT applied to skunks....)

But would like to hear from others about whether their whether their experience is similar.

Sad note: I had a young pup when living in Colorado. Little dude got into a quill pig bigtime. Cost me a handsome vet fee I could NOT afford at the time.
He was doi h fine, until I noticed his left eye becoming cloudy and festered looking.
It was a quill the vet didn't get and was working it's way out through his eyeball.
I had to.put him down. I couldn't afford another vet bill and was NOT going to allow him to continue suffering.

I don’t bother porcupines and enjoy watching the little slowpokes. I can’t blame an animal for trying to do what it does, especially when they do what they do simply defending themselves.

To bear hounds porkies and skunks are the same —a hound kills the first one and then ever afterwards they never touch another one or they kill everyone they can find.
Duct tape the front legs together if you have to and then one guy holds head while laying on body of dog. Pair of welders mitts helps—don’t bother with baking sofa or clipping quills—it’s a waste of time. Get a close fitting pair of pliers and—here’s the important part—pull the quills one at a time. You’ll be tempted to pull 5 or 6 or 20 at a time but don’t do it. Sometimes it’s a long tedious job.
Only dog I was unable to pull quills out of was a husky and that dog needed to be shot anyway.

Porcupines in this neck of the woods must be cyclic or something—back in the 1980’s I could kill 6 a day and then one day they were all gone—I mean disappeared for like 20 years. Only lately have I started seeing them again with some regularity.

Same here.

And no, they don't learn that lesson. In fact the dog I had went after the second one harder.

Pulled 'em myself.

This is the first time any dog of mine had a serious porcupine encounter. The Labs would get a few quills in the nose and learn from the experience. I'm not sure why the spaniel was so aggressive; it was out of character for him. I think it may have been the small size of the porcupine.

Porkies are far harder on cattle than on dogs, if the porkie gets baled up in a hay bale.

One summer we had several square miles of BLM burn off just behind the ranch I was working on. I spent the rest of the summer killing porcupines and tossing them out above the irrigation ditches where the swather (hay harvester) does not go.
About a half dozen of the hapless little bastards.

I have pulled Quills, out of a lot of dogs, with no ill effects, but the worst porcupine injury i have ever seen, was a horse with Quills in his rear fetlock, we pulled the Quills, but the fetlock swelled up huge, we did everything the vets told us to do and spent to much money on the horse, we finally turned him out to pasture, he stayed fat but was never sound to use. the rest of his life. Rio7

Read Jim Corbett's, books about man eating Tigers, in India, he said most man eaters are caused by a Tiger, trying to kill a porcupine, and being disabled so bad they couldn't hunt. Rio7

It is more fun to pick up a porcupine than shoot it…

Not my dog and I don't know who's it is/was, this was sent to me by a friend.

No scheitt?..... and they don't even have to be baled.




If you think it's fun to try to get quills out of a dog, try getting them out of an 1800 lb longhorn that won't fit into the alley or chute.....

Last one I had with horns that big, my processor refused. He said it would not fit in the chute to the kill floor. And they do not take "farm kills" anymore.

I had to load him back in the trailer and then call out a mobile processor. I probably would have done the same for one with a snoot full of quills.

Shoot them on sight if they are anywhere near cattle or where dogs might be.

In the forest, I try to follow the old rule of leaving them alone.

They are pricks.....

I haven't been around as many pointing dogs as flushers, but I have seen several Springer Spaniels and Labs get mouthfuls of quills. Some dogs can be calmed down and controlled well enough to extract the quills, but others have to be sedated. The sedation is the expensive part of a vet visit.

After my Lab had a bad encounter with one years ago, I quit giving the spiny bastards a pass. Can't see any benefit to having them around.

Jerry

That's very interesting Mr. Deer. Thanks

Found this on the interwebs:

OWWWWW !

My experience too. My current lab has a great nose for a lab and has encountered several porcupines. He's kinda interested, but doesn't try to pick them up. Have seen 2 separate pointing dogs who are crappy retrievers but want to pick up porcupines. Doesn't make sense.

Skunks, well, I just hate dealing with them. My current lab will get sprayed and keep right on hunting. Weird. I have a good buddy who's gsp was sprayed and he started seizing. He wouldn't stop. Ended up at a vets office 1.5 hrs away on a Sunday night, I thought that young dog was going to die. Vet gave it IV drugs, kept it for two days. That dog was never the same and never hunted again.

That dog went in for thirds, and maybe fourths.

Anyone ever successfully snake avoidance train a dog?

My dog might bore smarter than I think. She found one of the little spiked bastards last week, got close enough to get 2 small quills in her nose, and then decided she didn’t want anymore. Good girl.

Yes. I train all mine.

Copperhead got Bandit on the cheek before I got him trained. He was just a pup.

Now you can say "Snake!" and he runs to me. I train them not only to avoid snakes, but to respond to the word.

Both my dogs now can see a snake on TV and they leave the room.

As soon as I typed the above post, my wife was outside with the dogs and called me to kill a copperhead.

She said Bailey had spotted it and alerted her to the snake. But didn't go near it.

I got my Ruger Wrangler with snake shot shot the copperhead. It had a big lizard it'd just killed under a big oak tree.



After I killed it, both my dogs still kept their distance. They won't go near a snake of any sort.

We've done the snake avoidance clinic with four bird dogs - small munsterlanders...

Dog 1 - kills any snake before you can even command or e-collar or anything...she is not slowed down in the least.

Dog 2 - stays away from snakes and even coiled ropes on boat docks...when youre around. But, after dog 1 kills a snake, dog 2 is the one prancing around with it.

Dog 3 - we kind of did our own clinic with this one with a diamondback fresh kill...it worked. But, she's the smartest of all...so in reality we could have probably drawn her a diagram or let her watch a power point and she would've edited it and sent it back to us for correction.

Dog 4 - went to clinic, worked and has stuck. She is the best condition trained dog. Her training and rituals stick.

All are awesome dogs.

Along with every other male and female...

My coon hounds used to get into a porky once in awhile . One of my beagles and my Rottweiler got a snoot full too. They all let me pull them myself with no issue. I used to shoot them on sight when I had hounds but wouldn't anymore unless one was hanging around the yard.

I hear porcupine is good eating.

About 20 years ago porkies invaded our camp chewing up the outside walls. I did some searching and read about salt, so we started putting out a 50 pound block once a year and it has worked good. Porkies like salt but eat enough of it that it kills them.

Had a friend that had to put his poor little Griffon, Rosie down, she had so many quills in her face and eyes and there was nothing they could do for her as the quills in her eyes would work their way back into her brain and that is no way to die. I don't normally kill them but if I find any that are around our place they're getting a 22 in the nugget.

I give porkies a pass, I have had dogs roll in old carcasses and had to pull quills that were rather putrid. This especially true if they are in a tree. I figure if the porky is in a tree my dogs can't get stuck in any way.

The Continental breeds were bred to kill vermin so it is almost impossible to break them of trying to kill porkies (or just about any other smaller mammal). I've tried with a captured porky (I catch them by the tail like Shrapnel but don't ball them up and grab the tail. I use a coat over the tail to hold the quills down then grab. I saw Jim do this while Merlin gave his sales pitch.) but I ended up pulling quills myself or going to the vet if the dogs didn't heed the collar. I've had 5 wirehairs, 3 shorthairs, and one each griffon, Pudelpointer, and Large Meunsterlander. I got lucky with 2 wirehairs and a shorthair as they never got stuck. The rest were quilled multiple times with one wirehair from VDD lines getting quilled three times before killing the porky and carrying it a quarter mile home to me as he wouldn't drop it for my wife.

Of 6 English Setters and a Pointer, only one did not get stuck with two setters and the Pointer getting quilled multiple times. The one that did not get quilled was the only one that didn't take after the German dogs by being sharp on fur. The rest developed a killer instinct though it was tempered some during break training. If the porky was in plain sight they reluctantly gave it a pass, if it was suddenly come upon, it would be bitten.

The two Springers, both had been quilled 2-3 times but only slightly and I had no problem pulling quills myself. The three labs were fortunate as I was mostly waterfowling or pheasant hunting at the time and porkies were virtually nonexistent in those areas. I did hunt grouse then but porkies were few and far between then.