Many people don't realize that porcupine are excellent climbers, but they are!
The most humane way to dispatch a live animal is not with primitive weapons, but the modern gun.
Quick and painless.
We will need a hot fire to cook with this primitive technology.
We are going to make an earth oven, and that requires rocks, lots of them.
To me, primitive technology is less about the tools, and more about the cooking.
I will obviously be not using just primitive technology in this adventure.
I asked John Plant, the YTuber by Primitive Technology, and he doesn't care if people us the name in their titles.
Digging a hole...hint of what's to come.
Primitive earth over, or a hangi.
The hole should be at least twice as big as you would think, because we will need to put all the rocks, plus the meat in.
We removed part of the quills, the rest we are burning off.
We are split on which worked best.  I think I would probably take the time to pluck them all next time.
Even with singing, there was a lot of quills left over.
The quills smell like burned hair.
Cleaning the insides are as easy as any other.
The innards are not cooked, nor did they burst during singing.
This membranes holds everything in.
To cook like this requires the rocks to be very hot in order to transfer the heat to the meat.
Burdock root to cover the meat before covering.
Burdock roots are edible.
We will use cattail shoots to help tie the burdock leaves around the porcupine.
 
This needs to be tied up well so that dirt doesn't get into the meat.
These rocks are very hot!
Some say to add the fire on top after covering.  We did not.
You can see the steam coming off all the cooking burdock which will transfer to the meat.
The next morning we start a fire to cook more primitive foods.
This is field corn, very much like the corn people used to eat.  It is very dry and can not be eaten this way.
In order to grind it, we'll first need to parch it.
Parching it makes the kernels more brittle and crush and grind easier.
 
 
This smells like popcorn!
I build this mortar and pestle earlier.
It takes a lot less energy to crush the corn this way, than to chew it!
 
The idea is to make a fine powder which is more digestible.
Pig fat for cooking.
Fresh strawberries in corn cakes.
These are blueberries.
Time to unearth the beast!
 
This last part we are doing by hand to avoid getting dirt in the meat.
The porcupine has been cooking in the primitive earth oven for more than 12 hours now.
Some mud did get into the meat, however.
It also rained a lot overnight, cooling the whole process down a lot.
The meat was quite good, but a little bit under cooked.
It was, however, very tender.
The meat was given another quick cook in a pot.
 
The corn meal cakes turned out very good.
We added some fresh chokecherry jam to the cakes.  Delicious!
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