Small Game, Predator and TrappingFrom shooting squirrels in your backyard to calling coyotes in Arizona. This forum now contains trapping information..
My home and property has been bombarded this entire winter with Skunks. There are literally families of them taking up residence under my home, albeit boarding everything off as much as possible. I've trapped them and shot them, but they keep coming back like there are and endless amount of them, and my home stinks so bad of Skunk urine that it's almost impossible to live here! Any ideas of how to get rid of them, or better yet, drive them off? I'm having a very serious problem with this and hoping someone can offer some goodsuggestions.
I have never tried it but as far as the skunks under the house, i have heard that a couple boxes of moth balls scattered under the house will keep anything out. There pretty cheap so it wouldnt hurt to try. Let me know if it works.
The North Carolina Extension Service Animal Damage Manual (available on line) states that moth balls (Napthelene) is sometimes effective but that no repellents are registered. That means that while some will work some of the time, there are no guaranted products available. Your best bet is to make your home as unattractive to Skunks as possible. Insure that garbage or pet foodsare not available for them to eat, seal off all entry points to buildings with hardwear cloth or other fencing small enough so they can't get through. Clean up all brush and wood piles close to your dwelling or out buildings. If you live on a farm, particularly a poultry farm, this may be a bit difficult to accomplish. You can trap them in live traps draped with canvas or camo cloth and baited with a can of cat food or other goodies, then, when captured, ease up on the trap and cover the entrance and quietly move it to a safe distance and release it. If you decide to shoot them, most Wildlife control operators will shoot them once in the spine to avoid a spray then immediately in the head to kill them. Some use euthenasia chambers or lethal injection but I personally find this to be a bit cumbersome. Some states may mandate this method so check with your DNR or county animal control folks before getting too involved. Good luck.
the problem is I can't remember for the life of me the specific name of the product.
It's a fly bait, in powder form, with a red/yellow/white label. And you dilute this stuff with beer/cheap wine and put it in a bowl, and let the 'nusiance' drink it, like a cat would drink a saucer of milk.
It will kill any coon, skunk, possom, dog, cat,or anything for that matter that drinks it.
the only problem is that it will kill EVERTHING and I mean everthing that drinks itwithin a few feet of the bowl.
I am a firm believer that the skunks biggest enemy is the house cat. a skunk and cats do not do will in the same envirement cats win out. we had a real skunk problem a few years ago i shot 12 before the cats next door came to live around here now the skunks are all but gone. but the cats like to piss in the same spot all the time and this causes a problem. i used mothballs to keep the cats away from the house foundation. all so when i had the skunk problem i was feding the birds pop corn bread and old cerial i know this didnt help my problem
The North Carolina Extension Service Animal Damage Manual (available on line) states that moth balls (Napthelene) is sometimes effective but that no repellents are registered. That means that while some will work some of the time, there are no guaranted products available. Your best bet is to make your home as unattractive to Skunks as possible. Insure that garbage or pet foodsare not available for them to eat, seal off all entry points to buildings with hardwear cloth or other fencing small enough so they can't get through. Clean up all brush and wood piles close to your dwelling or out buildings. If you live on a farm, particularly a poultry farm, this may be a bit difficult to accomplish. You can trap them in live traps draped with canvas or camo cloth and baited with a can of cat food or other goodies, then, when captured, ease up on the trap and cover the entrance and quietly move it to a safe distance and release it. If you decide to shoot them, most Wildlife control operators will shoot them once in the spine to avoid a spray then immediately in the head to kill them. Some use euthenasia chambers or lethal injection but I personally find this to be a bit cumbersome. Some states may mandate this method so check with your DNR or county animal control folks before getting too involved. Good luck.
Moth balls have worked well for me in the past.
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Hey guys, thanks! This is all really good information, and I sincerely appreciateall of yoursuggestions. You can bet that I will try each and every one of your suggestions till I get the problem resolved.
il Coyote, if you happen to remember what that recipie was for the poison, please let me know, as it sounds like this might be a way tolure the family living under the house out of there once and for all.
Something my grandfather swore worked was live trapping them and then dropping the whole trap into a stock tank to drown them. They won't associate the water with danger in time to spray. Just be careful when moving them to the tank and probably cover the trap to calm them down. I've never tried the drown method because on the farm I grew up on it wasn't a big deal to just shoot them in the trap and then quickly bury them. It takes a lot for a skunk to spray in defense. You can poke at them in a live trap with your gun barrel to position them and they won't spray. At least I never got sprayed and I trapped a lot of them. Once shot they will spray so its best to shoot and scoot and have a hole pre-dug. If you bury them others willoccasionaly dig them up and eat them. I've shot quite a few that were cannabilising their own.
If all else fails move to Alaska. There's no skunks here.
Thats what my friends dad used to do. Trap 'em and throw 'em in the river or a large bucket to drown them. I hear it works good, if you can trap them that is.
Moth balls have always worked for me for everything from fox to coon.
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Work is for people who don't know how to hunt!
They are easy to trap. Hard to keep them out of traps as a matter of fact. Sardines, rotten eggs, fried chicken.... all make decent bait. Drowning is an effective way to deal with them. Injection works well too and isn't difficult.
Take care with poisons. They are indiscriminate and will kill anything that gets into them. Also, a poisoned animal often wanders to die leaving a carcass to pass the poison on to what ever decides to chew on it.
SKUNKS
