whistle pig

plural whistle pigs

1. USdialectalThe woodchuck.

   The whistlepigs, or woodchucks as we would call them in the North, get very fat in the autumn feeding on chestnuts.

   1904, Clifton Johnson, Highways and Byways of the South, New York: Macmillan Company, page 141

   3 more examples

   “Uncle” Joe Drane (who, besides being a good hunter and a fine shot, is also a cook with a reputation) had prepared breakfast. This morning it consisted of “whistle pig” (groundhog) and several fat squirrels he had killed the evening before, sweet potatoes, corn pone with sorghum and coffee.

   1917 February, “After Bruin in the Big Smokies”, in Field and Stream, page 313

   Robinsons Friday, the mighty Nimrod of New Millport, has succeeded in bagging 47 whistle pigs, 16 squirrels and a screech owl.

   1921 October 12, “News of Our Neighbors – New Millport”, in The Clearfield Progress, page 2

   As a weather breeder a great and unwarranted responsibility has been thus shifted to Johnny Woodchuck. In the Southern mountains, where he is known as the whistle-pig, he is all the more resented when sleet finds the unstopped cracks in a log cabin and unseasonable chill penetrates the corn-husk bed with its scant covers.

   1927 January 30, “Ground-Hog Day Holds Its Own”, in The New York Times, page 10