Not so long ago, northern New Englanders could earn pocket money by catching and killing slow-moving porcupines and bringing the severed feet or noses in bags to the town clerk. After inspection, the clerk would hand the hunter a quarter or two along with a certificate for each porcupine tendered. The porcupine bounty was in full swing and many a North Country old-timer recalls coming across bloated, nose- and foot-less carcasses in the woods.

Marcel Masse, who immigrated to Vermont at the age of 6, recalls catching “quill pigs” in the 1950s: “We would get 40 cents for a pair of ears from the bounty hunter. We made good money. We cut out ears from the tails, the bellies, the sides. If you could shape them nice, you could make up to $12 for one porcupine.”

The bounties were passed by the legislatures of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont in the early 1900s. The critters were plentiful; AMC’s famed hut manager, Joe Dodge, who coined many a quirky name for the landmarks around his Pinkham Notch home, renamed the place “Porky Gulch” because of the large number of the animals in residence.

Loggers eager to sell every tree possible were also plentiful and considered the porkies detrimental to business, claiming they destroyed valuable timber. In wintertime, porcupines turn to trees for nourishment, sitting up high and stripping bark or pulling off the ends of branches. Lots of small branches and needles littering the base of a hemlock in winter is often a sign a porcupine has been there. Salt lovers, they have also been known to gnaw on canoe paddles and other items handled by sweaty humans. Some power outages (including one in yours truly’s home) have been a result of major porky wire chews.

While state legislatures passed the bounty bill (and funded it—Maine alone paid out $300,000 in animal bounties between 1909 and 1954), not everyone believed in it. In Wild Mammals of North America, George Feldhamer writes, “Trees are seldom killed by porcupine activity.” Fire, fungi, and insects might have done far more damage to trees than porcupines—and ironically, many blazes are said to have been caused by careless bounty hunters spending so much more time in the woods.

Starting in the 1950s, the porcupine bounty laws began to be repealed; none remains on the books today. Fishers were introduced in Maine and other states in the 1960s and bounties lifted on other predators like bobcats and coyotes. Still the porky population is strong today—though you almost wouldn’t know they’re around. Just try to think of the last time you saw one. Solitary and anti-social, these critters spend their days sleeping in tree trunks or caves and do their best to avoid human encounters. Do you really blame them?