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National Geographic : 1950 Aug
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The National Geographic Magazine Donald A. Slencer Caught by the Tail, Rebellious Porky Is Pulled from His Rocky Den "Capturing porcupines is easy compared to photographing them!" the author commented after nabbing this one in a crevice south of Denver, Colorado. Porcupines usually range at night. During the day they hide in caves, boulder piles, or hollow logs. They make no bed of leaves nor do they store food; they seek only protection from enemies and the weather. being able to find and eat a porcupine? Many hunters are lost each big-game season in the United States, but their deaths are due largely to injury or exposure, not to starvation. In northern Canada and Alaska conditions are entirely different. There the hunter or trapper is usually well able to cope with the elements when lost or stranded by storm. But his survival is dependent on the availability of food. That hunter of the far north knows the habits of porcupines and relishes the meat for food. Neither fact applies to our city deer hunter in the States. A Patient Tree Sitter A porcupine's instinct to stay put is a boon to the traveler in remote areas threatened with a dwindling grub supply. A porcupine will often spend days or weeks in the same tree. An observant fur trapper, covering lines extending 50 to 100 miles from his base camp, might return to a spot where he had seen a porcupine a week or more before with a good chance of locating the animal. From northern British Columbia come several stories in native jargon sent me by Har Quick, now serving with the Arctic Insti tute of North America. One trapper, when asked about porcupines replied, "Porkypine pretty important. When crust is on snow and you can't stalk anything, you might be able to find a porkypine because he don't travel so fast." Still another native pointed out that the old people like porcupine and hunt it a lot as they cannot "hunt hard or do the hard work of butchering an animal as large as a moose." As for the method of preparation: "Build a big fire. Throw porkypine in. Burn off all the quills and hair right down to the skin, then pull it out. Gut it and cut off head and feet. Roast it on hook. Cooks fast, about half as any other animal." In the States I have been asked for freshly killed porcupines by a French-Canadian lum berjack in northern New England, and by Navajo Indians in southwestern Colorado. In each case, they stew the meat and add vege tables. Nevertheless, I doubt if it will ever gain general favor in the States as food. It is difficult to prepare for the table, and the excessive parasitism of porcupines by tape worms and roundworms would rule against it. 264
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