Recently took a weekend to the Boise area. Coming from the dense Inland Empire it was nice to get back to some open country. I like to be able to see. Kinda got into a pissing match w a gal. Whistle Pigs vs Rock Chuck. We saw a mounted yellow bellied Marmot. To me this is a Rock Chuck by local dialect but actually a Marmot. I assumed it was called a Whistle Pig to the locals. Not the case. Can anyone tell me what the Idahoans are calling whistle pigs?


And for that matter, Boise was way more populated than I expected. With Nampa, Caldwell, Eagle, etc....can one drive 1 hour in any direction and get into some shooting of some kind??? A predator board made it sound like there were plenty of opportunities in Boise and Gem county for rabbits. Whistle Pigs and badgers. Maybe not so much on Rock Chucks?

I don't know what a whistle pig is, but I do know what a rock chuck is...which is sometimes mistakenly called a Marmot as I understand it.

Yellowed belly marmot

The marmots and woodchucks do on occasion whistle.. Hence the name.. The yellowed belley marmot and hoary marmot are western animals.. The woodchuck an eastern cousin.. I am sure they all have local names.. In my part of the west, marmots are called whistle pigs by some.. They are also called rockchucks.. That is their most common name here..

In the Boise area to the natives whistlepigs is the local name for the small variety of desert ground squirrels, they are also locally called gophers and/or picket pins.
Rockchucks are called - SURPRISE! - rockchucks.

drover

Never heard 'em called whistle pigs locally. Always rock chucks or occasionally, sage rats...

And even in the few replies there are vast discrepancies. I grew up on the east coast. And have shot woodchucks, also called ground hogs. And rock chucks out West are actually, and correctly Marmots. Both are from the Genus Marmota....not gonna argue the rock Chuck vs marmot local dialect. But I still don't think a whistle pig and rock Chuck are the same critters to the southern Idaho people.

Safe Rats, Picket Pins, Grey Diggers are all ground squirrels I believe. Max weight of approx 1 pound. Rock Chucks/yellow bellied marmots are pretty big from 5-20 pounds.


So what are the elusive Whistle Pigs???

Yes, the marmots, regardless of east coast vs west coast all scream or whistle....hence my argument with the gal.

Whistle pigs are referred to as groundhogs back in PA.

Having lived all over Idaho I have always heard Rock chuck, marmot and whistle pig used interchangeably in reference to the Yellow-bellied Marmot.

Rock chucks are Marmots and "whistle pigs" are ground squirrels. I also call them squeaks.

I live is SW Idaho, and this is correct.

I have never heard "whistlepigs" on the east side of the state....maybe it's due to all the transplants on the west side?

^^^^^^^^^^This^^^^^^^^^^

Whistle pigs are a desert variety of ground squirrel. Rock Chucks are 10 times bigger and much different looking.

But they are all fun to shoot......

I've shot some furry fatties in the dark that kinda whistled and grunted now and then.......
but I'm usually trespassing, so I'm gone long before daylight.
These days I'm normally packin' a single shot.



P.S. It's a big bore.

Em brought this cool old "animal" book home from the thrift shop last night, she thought the kids would like it..... she was right, I do. Was flipping through it, and ran across this....

From "Natures Ways: How Nature takes Care of its Own"; 7th Printing, 1969.....

I lived in Boise in the 80's and rock chucks were known as "whistle pigs". Left for a few years, moved back to south west Idaho in 2004 and everybody was calling ground squirrels "whistle pigs". Looked at me like I was some kind of weirdo when I called a rock chuck a "whistle pig".

Yes, for some reason people in the Treasure Valley seem to call ground squirrels whistle pigs, but telling them otherwise will surely get you into an argument.

When I become president all of the cutsey names like Whistle Pig, Sage Rat, Yote, Song Dog, Yodel Dog, Speed Goat (especially Speed Goat) will all be banned......no exceptions.....

But Field Grade, those nicknames are all so cool, especially when you turn your ball cap backwards and say them while holding your hand up to the sun so it doesn't hurt your eyes! Lol. You crabby old fart!

Happy Friday Charlie!

I can't believe Mr. Rockchuck himself hasn't chimed in yet!

Thanks Bob....

Off Topic, but we have the Hoary marmots in the Cascades of Washington. And they's some big bastids.....look like bears when you are glassing extreme distances and can't tell relative size cuz all the trees are shorter at timberline. And we have several yellow bellies in Downtown Spokane.....but not too terribly many in the outskirts where one could have a great afternoon of shooting...

Same thing around here....there's a butt load of em along the Snake River in downtown Lewiston...

That's interesting. These days nobody would call a rock chuck a "whistle pig" around there.

Times have changed I guess.

I do love shooting "rock chucks" from across the Snake River Canyon near Twin Falls. They'll fall 1000 or so feet down sometimes.

Thought cross canyon shooting in Twin Falls was banned.

To the OP, no there isn't any good rock chuck shooting within an hour's drive of Boise. Where I define good to be more than a couple dozen chucks a day.

Not in the canyon just outside of Twin Falls...you'd get a visit from the po-po for sure doing it there. I do it near Murtaugh, Cauldron Lynn, just downstream from Miler Dam and areas near the confluence with the Malad River.

Jesse Jaymes: I have LOTS of relatives in eastern Oregon and western Idaho and for the last 65 years that I know of the term Whistle Pigs does and has been used to refer to Marmots, Rock Chucks, Yellow Bellied Marmots and High Mountain Whistling Marmots!
Many of my relatives "homesteaded" ranches on land that had LOTS of Whistle Pigs on it.
I went on my first "Whistle Pig" Hunt when my grandmother called me and my older brother to her kitchen where she showed us a "Whistle Pig" - said Whistle Pig was in her large garden and we were tasked with shooting said Varmint with an old pump 22 (Winchester 06).
We eventually got that Varmint (Rock Chuck/Whistle Pig) and grandma made us some cinnamon rolls in her wood burning kitchen stove/oven as a reward.
To this day that is one of my fondest and most vivid memories.
It is incorrect to refer to any of the Ground Squirrel family as "Whistle Pigs" as they do not whistle - they PEEP.
And many folks refer to them as "peeps" among many, many other nick-names.
Indeed Rock Chucks ARE Whistle Pigs and vice versa.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

In Virginia, we call woodchucks/groundhogs whistle pigs. When I first started hunting I remember my cousin whistling to get the groundhogs to stand-up in the tall grass so we could see them to shoot.

On a side note I heard a funny term for them recently. Eastern ground grizzly.

In Idaho we have a number of different ground squirrels, Idaho Fish and Game call them Whistle Pigs/Ground Squirrels. Most around southwest Idaho are Piute ground squirrel, and starting last spring started testing positive for the plague. Other parts of the state have different species of ground squirrels/Whistle Pigs. The very large whistle pigs are no larger than a beer. Idaho also has the different species of Marmots, Rock Chucks, and they are not Whistle Pigs. Some people may call all of them whistle pigs. But Idaho Whistle Pigs are ground squirrels.

Everybody likes to use a different term for whatever reason. It is never clear to the listener just what is meant by the sayer, it is just a code that is meaningless to the general population...

Out east people will refer to woodchucks as whistle pigs. They're interchangeable.

Out west marmot, woodchuck, and whistle pig are interchangeable.







Travis

I just can't get used to calling ground squirrels whistle pigs. They don't whistle, it's more of a squeak and I like to call them squeakers. Rock chucks will always be whistle pigs to me. However, most of the time we just refer to them as chucks. By the way, I hear that in Montana they call ground squirrels gophers! What's up with that! LOL

The letters RCBS (as in reloading dies & presses) stand for Rock Chuck Bullet Swage. Early on RCBS made tools for swaging 22RF cases into bullet jackets to shoot rockchucks. IIRC it was during or around WWII and copper jacketed bullets were hard to find due to war rationing & shortages.

SE Idaho for the past 50 years and I have never heard the term whistle pig.

I can believe that, it is more of a local term in the Boise area. I can guarantee that it was being used over 65 yrs ago by most folks who lived there, along with the name "picket pins". I never heard them called ground squirrels in the Boise area, at least at that time or even recently. But with lots of out-of staters moving there they are using their own names for them. In central Idaho it is about an even split between folks who call them gophers or ground squirrels.
On the other hand I have never heard a Rockchuck referred to as a whistle pig, yet we go to south central Idaho to shoot them every year and I have never heard a local to that area refer to them as whistle pigs.
Calling a ground squirrel a gopher, whistle pig, picket pin, or simply a ground squirrel, is regionally oriented - nothing more, it does not make one name right or wrong.

drover