Pennsylvania Game News - March 2024 - 59

hunt on Montana plains, I was surprised
to encounter porcupines frequently in
grassland habitat, far from the nearest
creekbottom timber. Yet, porcupines
have become rare in Montana's high
forests, where they once were abundant.
Montana wildlife biologists are trying to
learn if pine beetle irruptions, wildfire,
predation, disease or changing climate
explain the porcupine's disappearance
from high-elevation forest, while they
remain common on grasslands, where
they subsist on grass stems and roots.
Forest fragmentation likely accounts
for much of the porcupine's distribution
within Pennsylvania. It's entirely absent
from the extreme southwest corner, west
of the Alleghenies, and, apparently, from
the state's southeastern third. But interestingly,
the Carnegie Museum of Natural
History notes one specimen collected or
observed from Lancaster County.
Why then, would porcupines occupy
western grassland, but not the early
cutover, but extensive, woodlands where
we flushed so many grouse in my youth
along Pennsylvania's mountainous southern
tier? Those grouse thickets, perhaps,
offered porcupines neither the food and
security of older-growth woods, nor the
grasses they find on the prairie.
Now, porcupines are bucking the trend
of range shifts among eastern wildlife.
As the ranges of some species like the
snowshoe hare and northern flying squirrel
contract northward, and when southern
species, like the opossum and Carolina
wren, are expanding to the north, all in
response to warmer winters, the porcupine
is probing south. Considering that
porcupines feed largely on the inner
bark of trees, especially in winter,
it could be that Pennsylvania's
southern forests, where I learned
to hunt grouse, are maturing,
MARCH 2024
becoming attractive to porcupines, faster
than climates are changing, luring them
southward.
Next to beavers, porcupines are
Pennsylvania's largest rodent. As testament
to how they are sometimes overlooked,
this column listed our families
of native rodents in an earlier issue, but
neglected to include the porcupine - an
oversight. Other porcupine species live
in Africa, Asia and southern Europe.
But our North American porcupine is
more closely related to other rodents
than to those quilled porcupines from
other continents, classed as Old World
porcupines that live terrestrial lives and
cannot climb trees.
The most storied features of porcupines
are their quills. An American porcupine
can sport 30,000 or more of the hollow,
sharp, faintly barbed shafts. But contrary
to legend, they can't throw them. When
a porcupine impales a predator or curious
investigator, it does so through direct
contact, often by a quick flick of the tail.
Porcupine quills were important to
Native Americans of the eastern woodlands
and plains, who used them in crafting
clothing, basketry and ceremonial
items.
But those quills once got me into difficulty,
though not in the conventional way.
Somewhere near Kettle Creek I found a
porcupine dead on a road. I was into tying
trout flies then and wanted to experiment
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