Porcupine down

[mnoland30]

In the old days (perhaps as late as the '70s) the US Forest Service would provide .22 ammo to foresters so they could shoot any porcupines they saw.

I got on a airplane wearing my Forest Service uniform (sometimes they would upgrade us) and the talkative woman in the seat next to me said how happy she was about the reintroduction of wolves. I told her there was a reason they were wiped out in the first place. She didn't say another word the rest of the trip, which suited me just fine.

I would love to reintroduce wolves into central park. I think they'd do well there.

 

[Chas1]

Yep, I've seen that in the aftermath. It was a mess. Killed one with my bow in Colorado years ago got a spine in my hand trying to recover the arrow. We don't have them in the south thank God. We have raccoons. That's enough.

None here either but, lots of coons.

 

[jareese]

Well, the "lefty" in the name and "Wisconsin" and the 12 post history may explain some of the outrage, but the OP made it pretty clear they destroyed his fruit trees, and dogs and porcupines just don't mix well. So I really don't think there's no justification for what he did. I prefer not not have to kill more, but I believe OP's position was clear and justified, especially if he's had to take out FIVE of them from his dooryard this year.

Hey - not all us Wisconsinites are left leaning.

 

[22250imp]

When we brand there is always a calf or two that have a nose full of quills. We kill them on sight.

And a curious horse is also fair game. They don't get to live by my place.

 

[aalyea]

I used to shoot them in my younger years. Nowadays they usually live unless we find them near the house. They are a neat creature, but like most have said they are tough on the dogs! We ran into this guy last year while doing some sharptail hunting. Luckily, we were out looking for birds after a successful mule deer hunt, so the dog was back at home. He didn't like it when I poked him with my 12 gauge muzzle, but I just took a couple of pictures and left him alone.

Has anyone eaten them? Are they worth cleaning and getting cooking up? I have always imagined that they taste like a mix of meat and a gin and tonic…

They barbecue just like pork.

 

[dwcars]

Also…all 5 in my backyard. So far this year I have snapped pictures of a bobcat in the front yard, turkeys, foxes, deer, porcupines etc

You must live in a wonderful place~! Several years ago I had a place in the Poconos and would get out of bed at sun-up to watch the deer in the yard stopping to graze, eat the fallen apples, and the corn I spread. About once a week I had a bear visit and snoop around.

 

[ncwg2boatguy]

I kill them if I see them. Wack them over the nose and they're toast. They're awful hard on the trees

Prickly Beavers

 

[TacBlade]

We shot over 40 this winter on our ranch. We don't have many trees, compared to the size of our ranch, so we would like to save the trees. They eat a lot of Bark!

 

[Jeffrey Van Zandt]

when I kill them up here I give them to a family and they cook them in a open fire in there yard just put them in and it burns all the sticker and they do not gut them so after a bit they swell way up then they poke them with a sharp stick and that them out too cool a bit then eat them it is just there old way for doing them

 

[crkckr]

While deer hunting in Northern CA we'd occasionally run across porky's and even the forest service guys said to shoot all of fhem you see due to the destruction of trees in the area. I've killed a few of them but usually hit them with my deer rifle (.270 or .308) so there's not usually much left over!

My ex-witch loved to get out and deer hunt with me but basically she was a city girl even tho she was raised on a farm in Minnesota. She's the one that actually packed a hair dryer for a camping trip, which should be an indication of her thought processes!9

So we are driving to a camp site, way off the beaten path at night and I see this huge porky waddling down the dirt road we are on so I tell her to get out and shoot this big boy. So she gets out of the truck, finds her .243, loads it and comes up to the front of truck. Meanwhile I find and get my spotlite plugged in. She puts the rifle up to her shoulder and sees the porky in her scope and says, "oh my god, it's soooo ugly!" Bang! She puts a 95 gr Partition bullet into him. Ok, not exactly thrilling but you had to know her and it really was funnier than all get out!

Something you can't see during the day is when you plug them with something high velocity like a .243, is they unleash a cloud of quills that is visible in the spotlite! One less tree killing porky on the loose. (and yes, I know it's not not legal to "hunt" or shoot on a road, at night, in CA, even 35 or 40 years ago. Some things are easy to get away with depending on your location).

I can't speak for others when it comes to killing critters but I have never gotten a "thrill" from it. A sense of satisfaction from a spot and stalk on a nice buck or elk, absolutely. Some of these animals are not easy to harvest and it takes work to get a shot in them. Sometimes they get stupid and make it easy for you but I think that's relatively rare. At least that's been my experience.

But shooting a porky is not hunting, it's more of an execution. It's for a reason - they are quite destructive - and in area's where there are a lot of them the trees can take a serious beating. So thinning them out has a purpose. But I don't think of it as fun or thrilling. I suppose some do get a kick out of killing little critters but I'm just not one of them.
Cheers,
crkckr

 

[charliewhisky]

Porkys have always been considered a sort of survival ration on the hoof…since you can kill one of them with a stick, or a rock. I wouldn't kill one unless it was near the house. They mess up a dog something fierce.

When I was a kid, my neighbor was a specialforces survival nut. (He was our scout master so I was too). He killed one one day to test the taste. We ended up using a pressure cooker and it was still the toughest meat I've ever tried.

 

[ntsqd]

Shot a lot of ground squirrels and a badger or two as a kid in defense of cattle grazing and hay fields, and in the cases of the badgers defense of the irrigation canal's levy. Granddad taught me how to whistle the ground squirrel's "alert" whistle to get them to stand up. I know that they were around, but never saw a porky. I'm sure that I'd have been told to shoot it too.

We got a call from the neighboring dairy farmer one day, would we come down to help with their dog that had been quilled. Local experience in Central OR at the time was that you don't pull the quills from your own dog, you ask a neighbor that the dog already doesn't like to do it. The theory being that the dog usually ends up hating whomever pulls those quills.

I'm going to remember cutting the ends off to deflate the quill, hadn't heard that before.

 

[Equalizer]

Quite literally, some ranchers have given me permission to hunt their property SPECIFICALLY under the condition that I shoot every single badger, skunk, prairie dog, racoon, coyote, rattler, and porcupine I see. I was given full explanations of why also, and it was all quite logical. For every one I see and shoot, there are 10 more somewhere else. I shoot relatively the same number, on all properties I have access to... every year. So by that, I figure those old timers were right, as they often are.

After having seen what one porcupine can do, in one winter, to a wonderful stand of pine trees... I understood perfectly why that mandate was given.

After seeing what happened when a racoon decided to jump up into a running combine... costing the farmer in excess of $20,000 to repair...

After seeing cattle down, calving, having the calf and the end of the cow being eaten alive by coyotes...

After having to help put down the neighbors wives favorite dog because it's now rabid due to skunk encounter...

After seeing a thousand acres of ground destroyed over and over again by prairie dogs...

After seeing a badger dig out enough corner posts and break enough horse/cow legs, or tear up farm dogs...

When you see the reality of what trying to coexist with nature looks like outside of a disney movie, you realize the food chain is nature. That's how it all works. There's a hierarchy to everything. Those that think they can live like Buddha and exist outside of the food chain, are in violation of natural law. They can only exist and survive at the burden of others. The very instant things get tough, their so-called principles will go right out the window. Just like an "atheist" will start praying as soon as the first bullet hits their leg. Reality is what it is... and dishonest men are those that think they can live outside the rules set forth at the beginning for how all this works. You see it every spring without fail, as some dingleberry gets gored by a bull or mauled by a bear while trying to take a selfie in our national parks.

You know... this all really comes down to 90%+ of the people that LOVE to comment about all of this... don't live where any of this happens. They don't have anything to manage in their suburb except their lawn. Their idea of a "farm" is their 20 acre "ranch." Yeah, super rural. lol Attempting to have a logical discussion with people about ranch/farm life with people that have no clue what that life is about is a comical endeavor. They won't get it. They can't. Every single year, in the spring... some of those folks try to settle in this area. The very next spring... their property and most of their belongings are up for auction. They can't deal with the reality of existence here.

Me? I wish the winters were even worse. I wish the summer storms were harder. I want the line between "us" and "them" more defined and farther away than it already is.


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This post is spot on. The reality is the vast majority are far removed from the natural world and don't understand the very fact that they have the luxury to contemplate the ethics of hunting/killing highlights their removal from the natural order of things.

Those who live this way don't see how fragile "society " is or how warped "society " has become due to their inability to relate to that which they have never known. Opinions and virtuous behavior fall quickly to the side when society unravels as history is replete with countless examples.

Those who are incapable of learning from history will experience it.

 

[azmetalman]

My dumb *** dog has been quilled twice. One of those times in the inside of his mouth and throat so I just take 'em out now instead of paying 4k in vet bills

For some odd reason dogs just can't resist a 2nd, 3rd etc. go around with porcupines or skunks. Go figure.