Sprayed by a skunk
 

I think plenty of us have gotten on the wrong end of a skunk. What was your experience with getting skunked? You strip off all your clothes and hop in the nearest river or clear out the grocery store of its supply of tomato juice? And how long did you go before you didn't stink (or how long did you go on stinking?)?

Traveling from Seattle to Los Angeles I had a job scheduled, kind of a had to be there type thing, no excuses. Car crapped out somewhere in Oregon, wheel bearing and spindle. I had to leave it in a garage, parts on order. I took off hitchhiking to the next bus depot. I had my dog with me, a guy stopped to pick me up and I asked if the dog was Ok he said sure. I climbed in and then called the dog in, he came running out of the brush and jumped in the car. It took around three seconds, I was out of the car, the driver and his girlfriend were out of the car and left the car slowly rolling down the highway. My dog got Skunked. The whole inside of the poor guys car smelled like Skunk. I scrubbed him down with sand and puddle water multiple times and got most of the smell off. Got to say the guy that picked us up was good sport and gave us a ride to the bus station, all the windows rolled down and us breathing as little as possible. The people on the bus were none too happy about me and the dog either. :)

If I remember right, the formula is: A pint of hydrogen peroxide, a cup of baking soda, and a squirt of dish soap. Rub the mixture on the dog or car seat or whatever. Let it sit for a bit, rinse it off. The smell is gone. I have used this several times on a dog who couldn't be convinced that skunks don't have a sense of humor. It works. Pheasant hunters will mix it up ahead of time just in case.

I’d venture I’ve been sprayed 20-25 times in my life, and my dogs probably 5-10 times more than have I.

Simple dawn dishwashing soap and hot water is the most effective method. It’s not a “zero state” fix, but it’s good enough to be able to walk in public without passersby smelling skunk funk on you, with zero state returned within a day.

Makes sense since it worked for oil spill birds in Alaska. p.s. How'd you piss off so many skunks? :happy0157:

Glad the guy was a good sport about it. I'm surprised sand and puddle water had any affect on the skunk odor.

From what I've heard, dogs think when a skunk lifts it's tail, the skunk is saying "come sniff my butt." Except dogs don't speak skunk lol.

Wow! If such a thing exists, you'd be an expert in getting skunked. When was the last time you got sprayed? Or longest time between skunkings?

HAHA
well you guys have me beat, as I have NEVER been sprayed Yet
I know I had some very close calls that I can still recall very clearly, but I have never been sprayed,
nor any of my dogs, or fellow hunting buddies!
now friends dogs, well that's another story, one buddy's dog got sprayed 3 night in a row trying to catch one once!
not the smartest dog in the world in my eye's or my buddies

on a side note, I have seen some crazy things with skunks, that if I didn;t see i wouldn;t believe
I have had raccoons in my yard and had skunks show up, and seen them coons run over shove there noses under a skunks butt lift its back legs up off the ground and walk it out of my yard as far as I could see
and seen it about 25 times now
talk about either brave or dumb raccoons, but NEVER did a skunk spray, and they were certainly looking into the eye of the danger when they did this


and another skunk story of sorts !

I had a friend that always had a skunk as a pet, he used to have there scent gland removed sop they couldn't; spray
said they make excellent guard dogs
his used to greet everyone that showed up, running at you as fast as it could

and if you didn;t know better, you turn and run away I think LOL

The way I hear it, dogs either learn not to mess with skunks after they get sprayed for the first time, or they never learn. Sounds like your buddy's dog is the latter. As for the raccoon, I guess they weren't causing enough harm to the skunk for it to spray, but that's brave or dumb to shove their nose that close to a skunk's ass. Funny mental image though. I have heard skunks can make good pets. They're cute.

personally I think raccoons are one of the craziest critters in the woods, they seem to have zero fear at times and will take risks like no other critter
I have seen them steal apples out of the mouth of a bear here before, and seen the bears looking at them with a look like even THEY cannot believe they were that brave or dumb or just plain nuts! LOL

then again, I have also seen flying squirrels run over a bears head to get to bird seeds, but I think they just have really bad eye's and not so much dumb or brave!
in the summer time, I get a ton of bears here eating dropped bird seeds, grapes green apples or what not's,, and seen cubs chasing them flying squirrels all over the yard up and down tree's, rather funny to watch, but again, I think them squirrels have bad eye sight, even a little light one to view things messes up there vision I think, so maybe when I am watching I am part of there dumb sided behavior

but them coon's

Man they got some crazy in them! IMO!

That and a little dried grass, I was basically on the side of a highway out in the middle of nowhere, sometimes you have to use what you have. It didn't kill the odor but after repeated treatments, it made it almost tolerable.

No wonder the coyotes don't recognize you. Extreme camo. :D

I always thought you were a " stinker " with your attention to detail . Now I know why ! :happy0157:

The coyotes might not have recognized him as human , but they still ran for their lives thinking they dont want to get sprayed by the biggest skunk they have ever seen ! :biggrin:

Between live trap and foothold trapping, running hounds and terriers for coons - especially in abandoned barns & homes - and nuisance animal removal services, I suppose I’ve had more opportunities for close contact with skunks than most folks, so my dogs and I have been sprayed more than most. Terrier pups were probably the worst perpetrators of wrangling skunks while coon hunting. The big hounds would know better and stay focused on raccoons, but the terriers generally found all fur to be “the enemy.”

I’ve had a few instances where the faint-but-lingering scent of skunk remained on Monday morning when I’d be engaging a business partner, wearing a suit and tie, but frankly, I’ve had more trouble washing away the scent of rotten corn or milo after cleaning out damaged bins than I have had in removing skunk spray.

I guess you could always pass off the lingering skunk odor as cologne. Any business partners ever comment on it?

I have typically brought it up to the folks on my side of the fence, and most of the time, I’ve been intimate enough with my external partners to be able to bring it up casually. I only recall one meeting for which I was rank before a “first impression” meeting and I had to make arrangements for carpooling from one location to the next, and table seating in the room to make sure I wouldn’t get TOO close to the potential customer/partner.

Honestly, skunk smell has been easier to conceal or eliminate than facial bruises, bandages, casts, crutches, etc which came about from my other pursuits as a professional bull rider and amateur Brazilian jiu jitsu and mma fighter. Getting sprayed once or twice, MAYBE three times in a year, and typically on a Saturday hunt, so gone by a Tuesday meeting, hasn’t been nearly as awkward to explain away as has been regaling customers with the tales of whatever black eye or cast I might have been wearing after one of a half dozen minor or major injuries in each given competition year with much longer lingering evidence.

Any and all of these typically been a net positive influence, as only one time in my career have I had a business partner state he was glad I was a partner instead of an employee, as he’d never be able to stick me on payroll knowing the insurance liability I represented in my extracurricular activities.

I mentioned this thread to my wife this afternoon, and she reminded me of two instances where I have been exposed to chemicals which left me smelling as she claimed as “far worse than any skunk spray.”

The most recent - I contracted design and installation of a separation system for mid-distilling alcohols several years ago, but was left high and dry during commissioning, so I performed the start up and troubleshooting myself. Unfortunately, their design failed miserably, and I then had to redesign and rebuild on the fly - getting exposed to an alcohol which is used as a perfumant. It’s the chemical which, at 2-3% concentration, causes that dry burn at the back of a shot of vodka, or glass of wine. And I was dealing with a 95-98% concentrate - which also meant I had a splitting hangover headache for a couple weeks while working on the system. As if that wasn’t smelly enough on its own, the chemical is also a powerful perfumant, meaning it helped evolve any natural smell, for example, your body odor, or the smell of work boots - so even when the smell of the chemical itself subsided from my body enough to be tolerable, all of my work clothes, gloves, and boots smelled like a football player’s gym bag after two weeks of two-a-day practices in the summer heat. Just rank... I had to replace all of it, and some of the dress shirts and jeans I’d been wearing underneath.

The other instance, I was working on a non-corrosive, biologically friendly road de-icer product as potential replacement for the salts commonly used today. The primary pilot phase worked beautifully, the system I designed was beautifully efficient and effective, and we were ahead of schedule. The second phase of piloting used a waste stream from a commercial dairy as the substrate rather than the synthetic product we’d been instructed by the customer to use in the primary phase. The “real world” product did not align at all with their promised specifications, and quality was all over - it was largely rotten proteins and rife with organic acids... effectively, if you thought about rotten milk or yogurt, which had then been separated and allowed to rot AGAIN.... that was the feedstock they were sending me. The volatile compounds were incredibly binding to protein, for example, human hair and skin, and were desensitizing to olfactory receptors, so it caused us in the pilot plant to become desensitized to it... basically that meant it made us smell absolutely awful, with a scent which was exceptionally difficult to remove (it took WEEKS to debind and finally go back to normal), AND we couldn’t smell it on ourselves or each other, so we walked around really not knowing that we smelled so d@mned bad to everyone else...

Those were a lot more difficult to explain to other folks than the faint lingering whiff of skunk spray, and a lot more difficult to remove...

Hey I have been fortunate to never have been sprayed by a skunk. However I have had a few coon dogs and bird dogs that have been sprayed. While not as bad it is not fun dealing with them afterwards.