Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-06-26
The Quill Shooters Will Eat Up
Anything That Tastes Briny.
SPOILING A LICK FOR THE DEER
The Agility of Two Bucks 0ccasioned a
Memorable Coon Eunt.
SEVEN PICKED OUT OF ONE TREE

duyWueT0 else III tuc IIdSts lucy arc Cuil-
Gus creatures, these hemlock woods porcu-
pines, and great pest around lumber
camps. They are passionately fond Of salt,
and if the four sides of a lumber camp
shanty should be salted from ground to roof,
the porcupines would eat it down over the
very heads of the inmates, and not leave q
splinter to mark where it stood.
They don't mind a man or 20 men if there
is salt barrel in camp, and will persist in
getting to 1t as long as one of them is left
alive. The other night a drove of porcu-
pines made a raid on an old lumber shanty
west of this place, in the Mexican county
woods The shanty was occupied by two
bark peelers. The porcupines came from
all directions, made their way into the
shanty, waking the men by tramping over
them, and keeping them awake long time
possession of the place. With their axes
the bark peelers fought the bold and per-
sistent little animals, and it was not until
they had killed the whole drove, 80 in num-
ber, that they were able to go to bed again
in peace. The next night the shanty was
attacked again by detachment OF porcu-
pines apparently as large as the first one.
Ate Up Salt Pork Barrel.
The occupants had closed the apertures
through which the drove of the night before
gained entrance, and the second lot, finding
no place to get in, promptly set to work to
gnaw place through the boards. In a
wonderfully short time three different en-
frances were made by the sharp toothed and
industrious animals, and the two bark
| peelers found themselves under the neces-
sity of either spending the night fighting
porcupines again or surrendering the shanty
| to the invaders. The men concluded to
| wait and see what the animals would do.
| They ignored the presence Of the bark
| peelers entirely and scrambled to corner
Of the shanty where an empty salt pork bar
| rel stood-a relic of some previous oc-
cupancy of the premises. The porcupines
| attacked the barrel, and in less than an hour
had eaten it up, slaves, hoops and all. They
| then chewed up lot of boards near the
barrel, on which brine had been spilled, and
departed as they had entered, except that
they had carried away with them a good,
big load Of lumber on which they had
lunched.
"You don't have to skirmish around
much to get feed to fatten one of these
hemlock porcupines on, says an old Potter
county woodsmaD. "Just sprinkle some
salt over a stick of cord wood, or sawlog,
for that matter, and he'll eat up the whole
business and enjoy it like you would mince
pie.'
Uses His Tall in Climbing.
The customary diet of these animals,
though, is hemlock browse. They make
themselves home in a hollow log, or under
the roots of some old tree, but always
within easy reach of a big hemlock. The
ba, 10 air fbov lro
beaten paths going to and fro between the
tree and their homes. The porcupine climbs
tree as readily as squirrel would, pro-
vided you don't slip up and cut his tail off
while he is going up. Somehow or other he
can't climb tree without his tail, nor he
won't come down without it. II you catch
one of these porcupines climbing tree
and chop his tail off close he will stop right
where h. is, and will stay there until he
starves to death, unless he is taken away.
Once up a tree the porcupine goes out on
the big limbs, and pulling the small hem
lock branches in with one paw browses on
the pungent leaves: In going through the
woods you will find little piles of these fine
leaves on the ground under hemlock trees.
That means that porcupine is feeding in
the tree, the leaves OH the ground being the
droppings from the feast. Sometimes por-
cupine will remain in a hemlock tree
week at time, hugging close to the trunk
at night and feeding during the day. The
curious little beast is the only living thing
that eats the foliage of the hemlock.
Dogs Love to Fight Them.
While the hemlock porcupine is perfectly
harmless he is greatly dreaded by hunters
because it is difficult to train out of dog
the apparently Unborn prediction for
fighting this animal. The best trained deer
hound will stop anywhere on the trail to
have fight with porcupine, and although
the dog generally succeeds in killing hisgame
it is always with more or less wear and tear to
himself He is bound to have his mouth
and nose filled with the porcupine''s qu:lls
during the fight, and these quills are what
urge the dog on with renewed desperation
in the fight. The pain they inf1ict maddens
him, and he pitches in iercer than ever,
only to receive another quiver-full of the
sharp and ddeeply-pcnetratirg little weapons
the porcupine carries to defend himself
with.
Many a valuable dog has been ruined by
these quills, so many of them entering his
nose and mouth as to destroy his nose, if
not injuring him so that he has to be killed.
An important part of deer hunters equip
ment in this part of Pennsylvania is pair
of pincers, so that in case a dog tackles
porcupine the quilts may be pulled out OF
his nose. They sink so deep in the flesh
that they cannot be removed with the fng-
ers Many hunter, not having his pincers
with him, has had to pull the porcupine's
quills from his dogs nose with his teeth, or
else lose his dog.
The Sagacity OF tho Deer.
These porcupines we're a great annoyance
to the deer hunters, also, in the days of
Iol- %ba al of fho iclYc otf foI
them, and if porcuplne got into lick it
would spoil it for deer, for no deer would
come into lick for sometimes year after
a porcupine had been there. But then it
didn't take much to make deer shy of licks,
as to matter of that The dropping of
piece of iron in one would spoil it for deer
for many day. the smell of iron being
particularly suspicious circumstance to q
deer. Ii deer shot in lick sheds drop
of its blood there, no other deer would
come into that lick until two or three hard
rains had fallen and washed all sign and
smell of the blood away.
"When beech nuts and acorns are plenti-
full in Potter and the counties roundabout"
said Milo Lyman, himself well-known
hunter and woodsman, and son of the late
Leroy Lyman, of Roulette, who was Penn
sylvania's greatest hunter and amateur nat
uralist, eve always look for bear and coons
to come in thick in the woods and make
things lively during the fall and winter
And speaking of coons reminds me of the
greatest coon hunt, guess, that. ever was
known In this tier of counties
Tho Deers Were Too Speedy.
zone day in the fall John S. Dey, prom
inent citizen of Geneva, N. Y, came oil the
way over here from that place and said to
my father: Leroy, let's 60 out and kill q
deer
70 The FOREST 1 Honse on and % XIII two '