The animal
Africa’s largest rodent and the third largest in the world. A big Cape porcupine weighs twenty kilograms and change — heavier than a bat-eared fox and a jackal put together.
The quills are modified hairs, up to thirty centimetres on the flanks, banded black and white, and not thrown. That is a persistent myth. What actually happens is that a threatened porcupine turns its back, raises the crest, rattles the hollow tail quills as a warning, and then reverses hard into whatever is behind it. The quills detach on contact because they are loosely rooted, and they work their way deeper with the animal’s movement rather than falling out.
They are the reason a great many leopard and lion die slowly. A predator that takes a porcupine badly ends up with quills in the face, mouth or forelegs, cannot hunt properly afterwards, and starves. Professional hunters see it regularly.
Porcupine are strict vegetarians — bulbs, roots, tubers, bark — and they do serious damage to crops and young trees, which is why they are unprotected on farmland.
How the hunt runs
At night, with a lamp, and that is the only way.
Cape porcupine are entirely nocturnal. They emerge from burrows well after dark, forage along established paths, and cover a few kilometres a night. Lamping from a vehicle along farm tracks produces most of them.
They are not wary in the way a caracal is. A porcupine in the light will often stop, raise its quills and face away rather than run, which gives you time. The difficulty is not getting the shot — it is being out at the right hour on a night when one is moving.
Rifle and shot placement
A .222, .223 or .243 with an expanding bullet.
Place it on the shoulder. Porcupine are tougher than their size suggests, the quill mass on the back and flanks will deflect a glancing shot, and a wounded one that reaches a burrow is not coming out.
Do not reach into cover after one, and do not let a dog near it.
Practicalities
No quota on our South African ground and either no trophy fee or a nominal one.
Most clients keep the quills rather than a mount — they travel easily, they make good gifts, and a full set from a big boar is a genuinely nice thing to come home with. The skull is also worth keeping; it is unlike anything else you will take.
If you want the full skin mounted, say so before the shot. It is an awkward animal to prepare and the skinners need to know.
Import rules differ by country and some require treatment of quills and hair. Check your own position before booking. See our firearms and CITES notice.
