When Will You See Skunks in the Backyard?


Although you can see a skunk at any point during the year in your backyard, there are a couple of times that the problem becomes more prolific. These are right before winter, during the months of October and November, and also again in the spring, usually March to May. The first season is when the skunk finds a place to sleep away the winter, and the spring season for rearing young skunks, also known as kits. 


Does the time of year make a difference? 

Yes — you will need to come up with different skunk removal techniques for different times of the year. When you're dealing with skunks in the spring, you'll usually find that a mother skunk will move den sites regularly. If the animal leaves, you can then clean up and seal up the space she used, refusing her entry when she tries to come back. (Skunks often return to den sites they have used before.) There are times when just sitting back, keeping an eye on things, and waiting will pay off. 

When you're dealing with skunks in the winter, on the other hand, you can't just wait for the animal to leave. It won't leave. Not easily, anyway. Skunks do not hibernate, but they do faux-hibernate; they sleep away massive chunks of the cold season. Staying awake is just a waste of energy and resources because the skunk would need to find food in order to stay active, and that foraging for food could use more energy than the skunk would find and eat. Instead, the animal sleeps for long periods of time, waking up only when necessary to eat, etc. 

If you sit and wait for a skunk to move on during the winter, you might be waiting until next spring. That's not an option. 

Going back to spring, you must proceed with caution when attempting to move a mother skunk with kits in a den. Trapping and releasing the entire family might seem like a good idea, but when the entire family is released back into the wild, the mother tends to run off and leave her youngsters unattended. It is not understood why this happens, although it could be for a number of reasons. If the mother doesn't believe she can provide for her youngsters in this brand new territory, she could sacrifice their life for her own. A stressed animal is also not going to behave sensibly, and the mother skunk could run off to try and find cover, not realizing that her kits can't keep up behind her. It also must be taken into consideration that skunks do not have good eyesight, and kits can't see very much for the first few weeks of their life. They're virtually blind. 

If you are planning to use a trap-and-release method to remove the skunk and kits from your property, we strongly recommend working with a professional and experienced skunk rehabilitator. There are so many things to take into account when you're dealing with wild critter opponents, and even the time of year can have a serious and massive impact on how you deal with a skunk interloper. Doing the wrong thing at the wrong time could result in the death of one or more animals, absolutely by accident. 



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