The woodchuck or “groundhog” is a typical marmot, with coarse hair, heavy body, short neck, short, bushy tail, powerful legs, and feet armed with strong claws for digging. When fully grown it averages about ten pounds in weight. Its usual color is a grizzled brown, but in some districts black, or melanistic, individuals are not uncommon.
Marmots are common to Europe, Asia, and North America. The group contains many species and geographic races varying in size and color. The Alpine marmot of Europe is probably the most familiar of the Old World species and the woodchuck the best known in America.
North America contains several species of marmots, their joint territory extending from coast to coast over the northern parts of the continent and from southern Labrador, the southern shores of Hudson Bay and Great Slave Lake, and central Alaska southward to northern Alabama, and along the high mountains to New Mexico and the southern Sierra Nevada of California. The common woodchuck is well known to every dweller in the countryside of the Eastern States and Canada, where it occurs from sea-level to near the tops of the highest mountains, at altitudes of over 4,000 feet.
It is a familiar habitant of fields and grassy hillsides, especially where bordering woodland offers safe retreat. In such places it digs burrows under stone walls, rocks, ledges, old stumps, or even out in the open grass-grown fields. It commonly lives in the midst of the forest, where its dens are located in a variety of situations. The burrows are marked by little mounds of earth at the entrances and ordinarily contain from twenty to forty feet of branching galleries, one or more of which end in a rounded chamber about a foot in diameter, well lined with dry grass and leaves.
Within these warm nests the females bring forth from three to nine blind and helpless young about the last of April or early in May. A few weeks later the young appear about the entrance of the burrows sunning themselves and playing with one another, but usually ready to disappear at the first alarm. At times, however, they are surprisingly stupid and may be captured with ease. Woodchucks have practically no economic value. Their flesh, while occasionally eaten, is little esteemed, and their coarsely haired pelts are worthless as fur.
The woodchuck is a sluggish and stupid animal, which does not ordinarily go far from its burrow, but at certain seasons, especially in spring, wanders widely, as though looking over its territory before locating for the summer. It has much curiosity and often sits upright on its hind feet to look about, remaining for a long time as motionless as a statue. When one is driven into its burrow, if a person approaches quietly and whistles, it will often raise its head in the entrance and look about to satisfy its curiosity.
Its only note is a short shrill whistle, which it utters explosively at frequent intervals when much alarmed. At such times it also chatters its teeth with a rattling sound as owls sometimes clatter their beaks.
Owing to their mainly diurnal habits and persistence in living in and about the borders of fields, woodchucks are among the most widely known of our smaller mammals, and have long been the favorite game of the country boy and his dog. When cornered they will fight savagely and with their strong incisors inflict severe wounds.
They feed on grasses, clover, and other succulent plants, including various cultivated crops, especially vegetables in field and garden, where they sometimes do much damage. The holes and earth mounds they make in fields, in addition to feeding on and trampling down grasses or grain, excite a strong feeling against them, and farmers everywhere look upon them as a nuisance. In New Hampshire so great was the prejudice against them that in 1883 a law was passed placing a bounty of ten cents each on them: “Provided, That no bounty shall be paid for any woodchuck killed on Sunday.”
Unlike many rodents, the woodchucks do not lay up stores of food for winter. As summer draws to an end they feed heavily and become excessively fat. On the approach of cold weather they become more and more sluggish, appearing above ground with decreasing frequency until from the end of September to the first of November, according to locality, they retire to their burrows and begin the long hibernating sleep which continues until the approach of spring.