We ran into a big porcupine near the top of the "Scrubapple Hillside" at the mouth of his den/cave on Saturday where porcupines have called home for the 60 years I have been trudging that hillside. It is a natural cave mouth at the bottom of a 50 yard diameter, 25 foot deep cone formed by the earth eroding into the cave since the glacier receded.
My partner twenty-five yards to my right called "Porcupine!"... I called back "Shoot it and stuff it into the cave."
But all he did was to pick up a rock the size of a cantaloupe and give the thing a bad nosebleed whereupon it quickly retreated into the cave.
I wouldn't have been so kind but then, I'm from a different generation.
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"I'm a Setter man.
Not because I think they're better than the other breeds,
but because I'm a romantic - stuck on tradition - and to me, a Setter just "belongs" in the grouse picture."
George King, "That's Ruff", 2010 - a timeless classic.
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