In the 90's I worked for the sheriff's office in a very rural eastern Oregon county. My duty weapon was a S&W 4" 629, which I loaded with three 210 gr. Silvertips followed by three 263 gr. Keith-type SWCs that I cast from an original aluminum NEI two-cavity mold. That county was bigger than Rhode Island, and the single biggest landowner was a private timber company. There were so many porcupines that there was a bounty on them. I shot many on late-night patrols, on the road, alongside the road, in the ditches, in the trees. Tried many different bullets out of many different cartridges, in both rifles and handguns. These animals are pretty phlegmatic, takes a lot to stop them IME (though not near as tough as badgers)! To make a long story longer, I found through empirical experimentation that the .44 full wadcutter was the single best handgun round to use on them, so I carried a handful of them in my load-out. The impact shock was impressive. Most often there was a shower of quills and the porky was DRT.
