Spring isn't always pleasant! Ugh!

[Mule Packer]

Unfortunately, sunshine, spring weather, pleasant days and cool nights don't always bring forth good things.

Nope! Skunks are out actively breeding now. At least here around the ol' homestead. They not only try to get into the hen house, but they eat pheasant eggs, kill baby pheasants, and just wreak havoc. They can also carry rabies.

Time to start trapping. Ugh!!! There's all sorts of ways to dispatch them....drowning, asphyxiation, ad infinitum. I try to do it quickly. The quicker, the better.

First, though, I dig a good-sized hole to bury the thing in. Next, stand back 25 yards and aim for the head. A .22 hollow point is perfect. Now, bottom line, the thing is going to release no matter what you do. Sometimes it won't release for a few minutes and you can dump it in the hole and start covering it up. Other times, it releases almost immediately. Either way, when those sphincter muscles relax, it's going to stink.

But, on the bright side....if there is a bright side, we've got one less skunk.

 

[robvious]

so sorry... that problem really stinks...

 

[Onomea]

Coincidentally, I was wondering about if one could shoot a skunk and bag it in a garbage bag before it releases. Sounds kinda iffy. Previous owner reported that skunks can be a problem going after worms/grubs in the backyard lawn.

(Hmm. Maybe I'll see if I can set this up so I am the shooter and my wife is the bagger...)

 

[Rustyt1953]

 

[lihpster]

I remember when i was a kid, one day my father took me along to go check some traps he had set for raccoons. They were leghold traps with a single long spring. We check the first 3 and nothing. On the 4TH, you guessed it. Skunk. Now he hasn't been in the trap long, so he's pretty fresh and feisty. My father tells me not to leave the truck, under penalty of death, and goes out to deal with the skunk. I thought he was gonna use the .22. He sizes up the situation. Now the skunk knows he's there and is starting to have his suspicions as to why he's in this predicament. My father looks around and picks up a dead tree trunk, about 3" at the base and 20' long. I was a little confused, and so was the skunk, I think. Now it's time for the rodeo.
My father lifts the trunk high and brings it down. The skunk sees it coming. He dodges out of the way. My father hauls back the trunk and sets himself. The skunk looks like a goalie in soccer defending a penalty kick. Waiting to see which way to dodge. Wham! The trunk comes down. Zip! The skunk dodges! This goes on for 5 or 6 tries, with the skunk releasing the Kraken at some point, Before the skunk judges wrong and dodges right into the path of the trunk. It hits him in the back and breaks it.
So, now we have a paralyzed skunk, my father smells like the outhouses in hell, and I am sitting in the truck watching this and laughing my *** off. At this point my father takes out his pistol and dispatches the skunk. He then hops in the back of the truck and tells me to drive to his office, which is straight ahead about 700 yards. So, with him guiding me from the bed, I drive there and park and he hops out to go use the shower and get a change of clothes. Meanwhile, his boss buys me a soda and we chat. When my father comes out, still smelling something terrible, we asked him why he hadn't just shot the damn thing in the first place. He said he was trying to hit the spring with the trunk and release the skunk but the skunk kept moving the trap in it's attempts to dodge the tree.
All in all a much more exciting day than most!

 

[glowe]

. . . Previous owner reported that skunks can be a problem going after worms/grubs in the backyard lawn . . .

If you find small cone shaped holes in your yard, a skunk is in the area. I had a neighbor that trapped skunks years ago. I ask him how in the world did he get rid of the skunk once it was in the trap. I found out one day when he called me over to watch him take care of one in a trap. He got a blanket and held it in front of his waist and walked to the cage. He then placed the blanket over the cage and put the skunk in the trunk of his car!!!

He has caught several skunks and never had an incident so I asked him why? He said a skunk has very poor eyesight and reacts to movement rather than seeing shapes, hence the blanket to cover your legs. They also will not spray without a target so covered in the dark there is nothing to aim at. Plus, they do not like their smell either.

Would I do that, not a chance!!!

 

[Rustyt1953]

The human brain and olfactory system are marvelous and wondrous. The first time you smell something, your brain categorizes and locks the smell into memory. Thus is the case with the aroma of pole cats. Even when there are none around, you can conjure up the acrid, pungent aroma in your mind's nose.

After that durian, limburger and lutefisk are nothing.

 

[tnmandpshooter]

Catch it on a trap. Put a towel over the trap to keep it calm then shoot it and dump it out of a trap into the garbage bag. Problem solved.

Sent from my SM-A515U using Tapatalk

 

[alwslate]

I’ve learned the hard way that by shooting them you cannot possibly kill them fast enough to keep them from spraying And if you just leave the body out in the open where it can be seen from the air the Buzzards will eat them. You have to admire anything tough enough to eat a Skunk

 

[Ivan the Butcher]

On my farm I have a large number of skunks over the years. I have shot them with varmint rifles at a few hundred yards, I have shot them with snub nosed 38's at 2 yards. I have shot them on the run with shotguns at 20-25 yards many times.

In my experience, they are going to release at some point. Most usually with a pressurized blast. However once and a while they just dribble out.

My wife and I would often walk the perimeter of our farm in the afternoon or evening. I saw a skunk and tried to kill it with my 38 in the tall grass, but I never got a clear shot so I went back to the house and got my favorite 20 gauge SxS, a nice Sauer with a shoulder strap, and we continued out walk. When we got to the area where we saw the skunk before, I had the wife stay back while I went searching. I spent about 20 minutes looking but had no joy. As I was walking back to my wife's place of safety, I notice she waved to get my attention and the pointed straight at me. I turned around and about 10 yards was a the skunk running right at me. Start to raise the shotgun, thumb off safety, stock hits shoulder, finger brushes trigger, gun discharges, skunk is before his maker eating grubs for eternity! (about 3 times faster than it took to read it!) There it was, I had survived an encounter with an ENRAGED BULL SKUNK!

The neighbors were watching from their above ground pool deck and thought it was funny, the great white hunter on the prowl. They got a great big laugh for about a week, until another skunk moved in under their pool and refused to share it with them.

We moved to the condo at the end of summer 2014, just about a day before we moved I saw several skunks on our farm and eyeing the neighbors swimming pool. I wonder how long that skunk controlled the pool? My advise, when you move to the country, buy something that goes bang, to control the unpleasant and often smelly wildlife!

Ivan

 

[JcMack]

Lots of Skunk smell in the neighborhood now. But it comes from two legged Skunks.

 

[BillBond]

We have skunk problems now and then.
I catch them in a cage similar to what you have.
Then I shoot them with a 20 gauge with birdshot from about 10-15 feet.
I am not good enough with a .22 for a one shot kill.

But one thing I noticed is once you whack one in a trap,
the smell they leave behind attracts the rest of the family.
It can take weeks to trap the first one,
But after that I get another one almost every day until they are all gone.