I don't see much posted anywhere about the decline of these cuddly beasts.
They were very common here 30 years ago, it was considered sacrilege to kill one unless you were in desperate need of sustenance. Plywood signage is no longer chewed , and we no longer have to wash the dog urine off our tires either.
Clear-cut logging has removed large blocks of Pine, and the the Porcupine and Pine Martin seemed to be most affected. I miss both when I am out and about. What say you?

We saw one fours ago, as you said quite rare.

In the middle and late 80’s i would see 6 or 8 per day while running my bear baits. A week didn’t go by that ai didn’t have to pull quills from my hounds.
Then they disappeared and i didn’t see one for 20 years—except for when IO was in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Now the they seem to be making a comeback—saw a couple of roadkills last year and have seen about 6 this year.

Yes. They have become rare in our country as well where they roamed both the forest and sagebrush desert. Out in our desert environs one might see 3 or 4 sleeping among the branches of a large but infrequent cottonwood. Not anymore. Saw one in the forest about 2 summers ago. Folks with stupid dogs and horses don't seem to miss them, but I've always considered them an entertaining component of the landscape.

No idea as to the cause and most certainly cannot blame the logging industry in this region.

They are delicious.. I probably ate most of them.. be sure to skin them from the belly unless you like quills in your fingers..

I agree ^
Lots here in SE Alberta.

We still have a lot of them here were I live. The cattle ranchers hate them. It's not unusual to see a cow with quills embedded in their nose .

recent pics here showing gun dog encounters are not pretty

We have a lot of them in Vermont. Between quills in dogs and them chewing on my barn, I have soured on them somewhat.

I "relocated" 2 off our property, as I didn't trust the 3 dogs curiosity.

Have seen the nasty, done to my brothers blue heeler.

New 2 99s;
Good afternoon to you sir, I hope the day out in your part of the world is as fair, bright and still as it is here today. We're having a wonderful day for this time of year truly.

When we were farming, the cousin which we farmed with had a Cocker Spaniel which was as bright as the average spanner really - and no, we don't use that term, however he made what we'd call a Ukrainian Socket Set seem bright in comparison.

One of his many failings, other than running under the rear tires of pickups, was porcupines.

Somehow since I was the ardent hunter of the 3 of us who were farming together, the task fell to me to dispatch any wayward porky that came close to the yard which held said brain trust candidate dog.

As I was still in the pangs of remorse from dispatching one, when the 2 way radio announced another one headed to their yard, I swung by the house for a quick conference with my then new wife. She's always been the brightest one in the room Paul. so suggested that we grab a big box from something we'd just picked up, a chunk of 1/4" plywood and just live trap the thing.

The method was benignly simple really, we both hazed it away from the yard on a stubble field, got it into a slow trot - for a porcupine that is of course - and then at the opportune time she ran in front of it, put down the box and I scooped it into the box with the plywood.

Then I closed the box lid, carried to my pickup and we drove it 4 or 6 miles north to where no dogs but lots of bush were.

She still laughs about the fact that when I tried to release the little fellow, it seemed very reluctant to leave it's new home and seemed sad to do so!

On the subject of how many or few there are here, while we used to see the odd one here up on the sagebrush covered mountains most of the time, it's been so long since we've seen one that our eldest commented just last weekend when we were up hunting that she can't recall ever seeing a live one.

It's not logging here that's caused them to disappear either I don't believe, as we'd mostly see them in the sagebrush and Ponderosa Pine sort of foliage which doesn't get logged of course. I'm actually not sure why they're so scare, but here they surely seem to be.

All the best to you all this season Paul.

Dwayne

We just are not seeing them around here these days.
30 years ago while on a backpack Stone sheep hunt in Northern BC , a porcupine severed one of the shoulder straps on my pack.
It was a walk in off the Alaska highway( roughly 20 miles). I repaired it with a bit of fishing line and a needle. It was seeking salt .
That 50 lb pack never rode well on my shoulders after my makeshift repair.

Huey, Dewey or Louey?

I see a lot of them in southern Alberta, where they still seem to be fairly common.

I still see them in Nova Scotia when I'm hunting there. Their population fluctuates though. I have not read anything about them being endangered. They are still other harvestable wildlife and may be harvested at any time to prevent property damage.

2 police in Maine were purportedly just fired for beating several to death with batons while on duty.

https://nypost.com/2020/10/07/maine-cops-fired-for-beating-porcupines-to-death-with-batons/

Good luck and shoot straight y'all

WTF is the matter with people today, cops on duty for God sake ? You just can't make this kind of dumb sh~t up !

My grandfather told about the time, when he was in his early teens, he got a brand new pair of boots. These were custom boots from a maker of rugged footwear for loggers and outdoorsman and he said, with these boots on, he felt invincible. He put this invincibility to the test one night when he saw a porcupine and decided to send it on it's way with a kick. Those quills went right through the leather. Worse, some broke off and stayed in the leather and, from time to time, another would work it's way through. I miss seeing the rodents around but I don't miss the damage they do and their defense mechanism is a little over the top. GD

i don't agree with abuse but rather swift dispatch

They seem to be everywhere here. Nothing to drive to town 18 miles and see 3-4 smash in the road.

fishers!

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.

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.