Boco (and others)...

Yes, porkys are actually worth quite a little chunk of change if you make the time to harvest the "parts". Guard hair, plucked and cleaned of any and all underfur, is worth quite a bit per ounce. Likewise, good long quills are bought by the ounce, and can be removed from the carcass easily by batting it with closed-cell foam, them pulling the quills by hand from the foam. Also, claws are worth the time to cut them off the feet individually, and the skull is worth a couple bucks. All-in-all, pretty much every western porcupine is worth at least $40 if you part it out. I never pass up a roadkill, but with the population so depressed these days, I don't kill them any more when I encounter a live one.

Jack

Lots here on the prairies. In farmland where I trap I have to harvest them all. In the bush where I trap they get a free pass. You can sell the skulls, claws ,quills and guard hair. If your really adventurous you can get the bezoar stones out of the stomach. Chinese like them for medicinal purposes.


First 3 of the year that I plucked. Some have lots of hair others are sparse


Couldn’t find a good picture of our porkys. I need to take better pictures like Jack.

Some of the Swampy Cree do a beautiful quill patterns on smoked moose hides. Rose's bring out another meaning when you see them.
Back in the 1970-80 they tried to find the % of dark and % of yellow hairs and their numbers have dropped since then.
Ironically the prairie region of Manitoba has more porkies than the aspen parkland and boreal.
You can always find where they are in burr oak trees as the tips of the branches are scattered on the ground. Many eat and go back into some burrow close by for several days.

The toilet areas do have a turpentine smell and are visited by travelling animals making a gold mine for ADC guys.
BC Pete wise often tells of how to remove them. They swing their tails and eventually get tired doing it. Then he bends down and grabs the back feet and lifts- now he has a portable wheelbarrow and he walks it to his truck, where a 12 inch plank has been laid down to walk up - into a closed cab of the truck- relocation is simple-plank down and Pete goes and pours a coffee- clunk-clunk and relocation has been done, sometimes before the coffee is finished.

I had to take down four hemlocks in my camp yard this summer. Two were dead from porkies and two were not going to survive another winter of porkies chewing the tips off the branches. Every spring the ground under the hemlocks is littered with a mat of boughs from porkies chewing them off.

Beech trees seem to be their other favorite food. I planted 18 beech saplings along my driveway three or four years ago. There's not one that hasn't been chewed on and several were girdled and had to be replaced. I finally put 36" tall aluminum tubes around them. Hopefully that keeps them off.

Here’s a pic of some of the tubes. You can see some of the hemlock stumps on the right.




The quill pigs have caused me a lot of extra work.

The ones here I have eaten were pretty good. No spruce around so they eat willow . Taste similar to beaver, not much fat though.

I come across about half dozen each year sitting in Jack Pine trees and about a dozen on the road dead or alive.

You guys think they’re better off left alone or kill them?

For a long time, at least fifty years, they were protected in Pennsylvania. I always heard the reason was because they are one of the few animals an unarmed human can kill and eat. I suspect that is an old wives' tale or, in this case, an old hunter's tale.

Then about ten years ago they opened a four-month-long, annual season on them with a limit of three daily.

I will usually let them be when spring gobbler hunting or deer hunting and I usually release them out of traps. I will usually kill them when I come across them while bird hunting with the dogs.

DANG ! I wish I had thought of that !

I traded a fair number of porky skins for quill work from a lady from Ft. Providence NWT. Amazing work. She dyed and wove them on a beading loom mostly or pleated on moccasin vamps. She used the long thin quills from the sides for the loom and thicker ones for the pleating. All on smoke tanned moose and caribou too of course. I killed a few but got most off the road.
When I was a kid with a 22 we'd shoot them wastefully. I don't do that stuff anymore.

Have only seen 2 or 3 in the elk woods above the Joe in n. Idaho in the 44 years here BUT my daughters 2 hounds seem to find them every once in awhile just ask her vet : cry: