My father-in-law and I stumbled onto a porcupine today while bobcat hunting. I needed to break in my .45-70 Contender, so I took the shot. I managed to make a clean head shot and figured this would be a good chance to try porcupine meat. Just to be on the safe side, we only want to eat the hind quarters so that there is smallest possible chance of finding a quill in the meat. So if anyone has any good porcupine recipes, I'd love to hear them. Thanks.
Andrew

I don't know how good this is but let us know how it turns out.
Porcupine Cooking

I was told that I may want to boil the meat first to get some of the fat off. They said that this is common practice when cooking varmits. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
I only have the hind quarters off of the critter. We kept getting poked while trying to dress the stupid thing. The quills went straight through out leather gloves. It didn't make sense to get skewered any more just to find out that porcupines taste as bad as they smell.

They say that the indians just took the whole porcupine and put it on a fire ,that of course burned off the quills and cooked the meat .Somehow I don't care to try that one.

Yeah, burning the quills off wouldn't make the house smell too good. Never mind the burning fat and oozing scent glands and intestines.

Couldn't you go dull the quills by cutting them off square with a hedge trimmer or a pair of wire cutters? I realize that by this point, it's probably too late to try this on this particular porcupine.

H. C.

I thought I might update anyone who cared. I cooked the porcupine today. I won't say that it was bad. But I will say the local porcupine population doesn't need to feel threatened by me.
I'm not a spectacular cook, so that could have made all the differance. I enlisted the help of my good friend, and the best cook I know, Halena the Polish wonder cook as we call her. She didn't even know what a porcupine was, but she advised me to cook it like she would a beaver. This involved soaking it in a salt water bath for 4 hours, then roasting it like a chicken.
I can't imagine sitting down to a nice porcupine roast, but it should make decent sandwiches. Thank you everyone for your comments.
Andrew

I think I would have used a Cajun dry rub and hickory in the smoker. If that doesn't work then it probably isn't edible.