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Porcupine in a box


Curmudgeon
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While selling Christmas trees yesterday, customers who were cutting their own trees kept telling me about a porcupine that was in my trees, and girdling them. When things wound down late in the day, we found it, put it in a box and moved it over the hill. I figure as slow as a porkie moves, my trees should be safe for a while.

Technically, it would be legal for me to kill it but not move it 2 miles. Please don't tell DEC.

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I had one that come out and grazed every evening during that last couple weeks of bow season.  He would be in the hayfield  an hour before dark and I would walk by him on my way out.  I named him "Walter" and spoke to him  when I walked out.  I alternated between asking him how he was doing, and warning him not to chew on my brother's cabin or spring house.  

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I had a swordfight with one under a junked car when I was about 18...I had a  WWII Japanese bayonet and the porky had his natural defenses...Let's say that it was a standoff, but I was DAMN lucky not ending up with a face full of quills...It was touch and go for a while there... Alcohol may have been involved...

Last year I evicted one from an enclosed deer blind..When I climbed into it he was sitting in my chair...I ushered him out with my Muck boots and rifle butt...I ended up with a couple hundred quills stuck in my boots and my rubber recoil pad...

My Dad was  an avid coon hunter, so I grew up hating them after spending many nights pulling quills out of big hounds...For years I killed them on sight...These days, I let them be, unless they are being destructive, like chewing on my tower stand..

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Porkies are very mellow. a number of years ago, I saw one eating acorns outside where I worked. it was a pretty small one. I took a box and scooped him up, along with a few hand fulls of acorns, to take home to show my son.

Porky was apparently not too upset. He just kept munching away in the box. When we got home I gave him an apple to munch on, which he seemed to enjoy. After my wife and son got home, we went in the back yard and slid him out where he just meandered around a bit, didn't appear the least concerned. after about fifteen minutes I scooped him back up and delivered him to the base of a few big oaks in the woods we border.

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They are called a hikers best friend as if you are lost/stranded in the woods, they are an easy food source.  I have caught some while trapping in northern NY...my son and I skinned one a couple years ago...open like a beaver, not cased. Had a hard time fleshing it.  Borax’ed it and had it hanging in my trapping shed until recently...Bugs got to it.  I use the quills in my flintlock touch hole.

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they are extremely destructive to farm equipment, they LOVE to chew hydraulic lines. Between farm equipment and coon hounds I have little tolerance for them, few hundred dollars for replacement hydraulic lines or a few hundred for vet bills tends to change your attitude.  Luckily we don't have many around where I live in NY, but back home in Pa. they are becoming far more prevalent and with fishers being one of the only predators which we have very few of we take care of them on the farm.  

if they would leave the equipment, buildings, and trees  alone we would get along fine.   

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