Porcupine War

The fat, waddling, brown-black-&-yellowish-white, bead-eyed, strong-toothed, sharp-quilled porcupine of the West (erethizon epixanthum) has been protected for years for the same reason that porcupines are protected in the North and East: it is the one animal of the forest which man, lost in the woods without a firearm, could be sure of killing to escape starvation.

Largest of North American terrestrial rodents, the porcupine is, however, a highly destructive emergency food supply to have wandering unmolested through the land. It is a voracious vegetarian, not at all fastidious. Besides all manner of plants, buds and the inner barks of trees, it will gnaw at men's cabins, canoes and food containers, especially where any salty supplies have been stored.

The U. S. Biological Survey has now declared war on the western porcupine. It has issued a leaflet describing methods for killing porcupines, by shooting or poisoning with a 16-to-1 salt-strychnine mixture (placed where cattle will not get it).

Western porcupines migrate slowly, deliberately in the spring from their dens in the mountain lava cliffs to the valley farms, returning in the autumn. It is during these travels that they gnaw the butts of pine trees great and small. In some sections a huntsman would have no trouble killing 50 per day. Foolish is the huntsman who takes with him a dog. But for himself he need not worry. Legend to the contrary, porcupines cannot shoot or throw their quills. Only those get stuck who try to pinch or pat a porcupine.

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