annual porcupine hunt

[yorketransport]

First, a little background. The first time I met my father-in-law was about five years ago, well after his daughter and I were married and expecting our first child. All I really knew about him was that he a seroius hunter and shooter. We met at Easter dinner at my wife's Grandparents house in Ryderwood, a small retirement town surrounded by timber company land.  We hit it off instantly and decided to go for a walk outside of town after dinner so he could show me around. That was the first time I ever shot, or had even seen, a Contender. I fell in love with the gun, the town, and formed an instant bond with my father-in-law.

At the time I didn't own any guns. I sold the two that I had to pay for the wedding and the soon to arrive baby.  By the next Easter I had purchased my first gun since the marriage, a Contender with a 45-70 Hunter barrel and a TC 2.5x scope. Anxious to get something with the fairly new gun, we went out after Easter dinner again. At about an hour before sunset, I spotted something in the trail about 75yds ahead of us. I wasn't sure what it was, but it looked sort of like a raccoon. My father-in-law laughed and asked  if this was the first porcupine I'd ever seen in the woods. He proceded to tell me about the last porcupine he shot and said that they just aren't worth the trouble. I prefer to learn things the hard way so I decided to take him.

The first thing I learned that day is that making a head shot on a porcupine is more difficult than I thought. They just don't cooperate. The second thing is that they are alot heavier than they look. We had to carry that critter out two miles suspended from the middle of a branch using one of my boot laces. The third thing I learned is that skinning a porcupine is more difficult than I thought. I took more than a few quill before that job was done. And finally, porcupine's don't taste that great.

The whole ordeal was so funny to me that I said we should do this every year. And sure enough we have. Since then we didn't see another porcupine, other than in the middle of deer or elk season, until this year. After an unsuccessful evening of coyote hunting we spotted this guy walking out in the dark. Between the two of us we had a choice of 5 different guns to use: a 10" 7 TCU, a 12" 35 Rem, a Dan Wesson Bobtail Commander 10mm, a Contender Carbine in .223, or a Ruger Mark III Hunter that I just bought 2 days earlier. I decided the little Ruger would be the best gun for the situation. Plus it is the only one that hadn't taken game yet. After what can only be described as a comical and clumsy "stalk" though the brush after this guy I finally got him in the bottom of a gully filled with deadfall and stickers. The long and unpleasant climb back to the trail resulted in only 2 quills in my leg, so that was good news. Because of this whole ordeal we didn't get back to the house until almost 10pm. Everyone was either mad or disgusted with my trophy, but all Dan and I could do was laugh and tell them that the just don't understand.

After skinning and cleaning the critter, I only got stuck twice more, we put it on ice to cool. I tried barbecuing this one. And once again I learned that porcupine's really aren't worth all the trouble. But they do make for some of the funniest stories.

[Mikey]

Sounds like a 'prickly' situation.  It is a great thing when you can get along well with your father-in-law......... That always helps.  Mikey.

[Mohawk]

  How do you go about skinning them and such? That looks like a headache? What other game would you compare the meat to?

[petemi]

Guys, what you do is skin from the underside and roll it back as you work.  Next, you remove all the fat you can see, then you parboil the critter to get rid of some more you can't see.  You have to get the fat off them!  Then take the hind quarters, and front quarters and marinate them in anything you'd do venison or beef in, put them on the grill and enjoy. We did the first one this way with venison, and I would have thrown the venison away for more porcupine.  My .357 Blackhawk and I love Porkies.  Now's the time to get them before the leaves come on.

[yorketransport]

I'd like to try cooking up another one, but nobody else will eat it. It would feel like a waste to go shoot another until I can find someone else to "enjoy" it with me.  Other people have told me that porcupine can taste really good. My skills as a cook seem to be the greatest limiting factor at this point though.

[Dand]

Here is SW Alaska, porcupine used to be a very standard meal but I don't know the cooking methods. Folks would cruise the lake and river beaches in the evenings and whack porkies with an oar when the found them.  When I was first in the area (1970's) and working out of a field camp near one village, one kid used to come by and bum sandwiches from us complaining that he didn't like it when "Gramma cooks the porcupine 'cause she burns the quills off".  I understand she'd hold the animal over a fire and burn off the quills before she skinned it - but that it made the meat taste more like burnt hair. 

I have eaten beaver and we did the fat removal and parboiling - and we added some baking soda to the pot at some stage.  The water foamed up big time.  Then we pot roasted the meat and it was quite good.

My kid is eager to shoot and eat a porky so one day we'll have to try it. Since the porkies here gnaw spruce bark a lot in winter, I expect I'll be parboiling vigorously and applying the soda too.

A quick look at my "Cooking Alaskan" book suggests soaking beaver meat in water with salt and vinegar, drain, wash again, parboil with soda, drain and dry the meat then roast. On another page it says soak porcupine meat in cold salter water for 6-10 hours the brown floured meat in fat then simmer for 3 hours.  They also say porky liver is good fried up with bacon like regular liver.  So hope that is a place to start. 

I think I'd go with the parboiling suggested for beaver then to some sort of moist cooking with bbq sauce, sweet and sour flavorings, or in a brown gravy pot roast approach.
 
At this time of year I've found porkies in willow patches at the tops of the bushes eating the fast growing buds. A few weeks of that kind of food and they might taste more like beaver or moose.  Even had one climb on the top of a camp outhouse while I was in it.  Eye ball to eye ball they are kind of cute but he wouldn't let me pet him - switched ends pretty quick.

Maybe I should take my boy hunting in a couple weeks - we still have a lot of snow on the ground right now and spring is looking to be late.

Hope this helps and good luck on future hunts.

[buck460XVR]

Having bird dogs most of my life and living in an area of heavy Porcupine infestation, believe me I have no love of them and have taken quite a few. Many after they had deposited a face full of quills to one of my dogs. They have the darkest reddest blood of any animal I have ever seen, and have seen some big ol' boars that reminded me of small bears. I have tho, never had any desire whatsoever of eating one. Guess I just ain't been that hungry yet.

.  Now's the time to get them before the leaves come on.

yep, they stand out like a sore thumb silhouetted against the sky. Easily mistaken for a roosted turkey. Around here they feed on  pines in the winter and tend to stay deep within the conifers. They are easily found by looking at the ground/snow around the base's of the trees. They tend to feed on the same tree for several days and the telltale signs of chewed bark and wood is readily apparent....look up and search for a dark spot. Easy pickens for a shottie or .22. Just make sure when they are high up that you don't stand directly below when you shoot. They fall like a bowling ball and spray that dark red blood all over heck.

[Dan Chamberlain]

It took me 3 days on a deer stand before I had a big old Porky eating out of my hand.  He loved salted nut rolls!  On the 4th day, he was sitting up waiting for me to get there.  Season ended, so I hope he didn't "pine" away too long.

Dan