Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Trapping Skunk Dilemma

I've frequently spotted a large, really nice looking skunk down by the creek. This guy has the longest white hairs I've ever seen on one. It is also profusely covered with them. I've been thinking this would make for a truly one of a kind mount.

Now, for the dilemma.
How do I go about skinning a skunk without gettin' stink all over me? Would letting it freeze overnight help?

One way er 'nother, I wanna' get that skunk mounted.

The trick is in dispatching without the skunk spraying. If you can get that accomplished the rest is not so bad. Use a VERY sharp knife when skinning anywhere near the glands. In fact, an exacto knife, scalpel, or razor blade works pretty well. Don't pull and tug a lot while working in that area either. Once you have passed that area, they skin easy. Be careful when fleshing when you get to the tail. It is easier to break it off then on most animals and it is also easy to go so deep that hairs will begin to pull.

I think the only way to do it is to get a live trap and water tank that the trap can fit into. Fill the tank with water. Set the live trap and catch the skunk. Without the skunk seeing you, lift the trap up and dump it in the water filled tank, drowning the skunk.Either cover the trap with a tarp,or approch from one end that the skunk can't see.
This works,but be forwarned.If you bang the trap agaisnt the water tank on the way in,you have troubles.

There is no place you can hsoot a skunk that it will not spray while it is dieing.BTDT

Back a looong time ago, when I was trapping, we'get skunks once in awhile. We'd just shoot'em and leave them in the trap for a day or two...after they were froze, they didn't stink too much. We never skun 'em...just flung um.

Looks like my experience differs from most but when I accidentally catch a skunk, they don't spray or even lift their tail. I guess they spray everything they have when 1st caught because their scared or something. They still smell like skunk, but I have never been sprayed while killing one in a trap. When not in a trap, I have had vastly different outcomes.

Yea, killin' tit is gonna be the easy part. I've shot plenty of them with both a 22 Hornet and 12 gauge without'em pizzin' all over things.
It's the skinnin' part I'm leary of.

Guess I'll just have to go forth boldly and make it a learning experience.

Gawd, I ain't done none of this stuff since Christ was a corporal. Do you think fleshing a skunk would be much difern't than doin' a muskrat?

This thread is drifting perilously close to "hey, y'all, watch this!"

Naw, that skunk was last weekend. Did a first class job of field dressing it with my 264.

Skunks are very fatty - much bigger job than removing the very small amount of fat on a muskrat. I'd bring it into the taxidermist whole if you plan to have it mounted. He will skin it how he wants it and you won't have to deal with it.

Saddlesore is right about the water drowning trip, my uncle had a pond with ducks and he used to dispatch skunks quiet a bit.

I've had a significant amount of tomato juice around, and skin the sucker right there on the spot. Skunks stink.

Spot

I've caught them in a live trap, covered the trap (moving slowly) and transported it elsewhere in the back of my pickup and released them with no problem. Couple times actually.

You released a skunk? You have way more of a heart than I do.

If you have flowing water that has a decent current and depth to cover him put the dead skunk in the water trap and all for a couple of days. This should cure most of the stink.

Dan

My problem with this that Skunks are a rabies carrier and can carry it for some time with no symptoms.
So releasing a skunk could be inflicting a time bomb on someone.

Dan

While living in Albuqerque,I had a few acres I was irrigating off a ditch.From the ditch we had 10" culverts with a hand gate in them. You built the water up in the dicth and then opened the gates to the section of field you was watering.When the water was turned off,there were a lot of crawdads, etc in the dicth and skunks use to frequent the ditch to eat,then crawl up into those 10" culverts to sleep.The next time you watered, if the skunk was still in the culvert,you flushed it out when you opened the gate.Them skunks came out severely pissed.
I had a neighbor that would run up behind them and grab them by the tail and keep swinging them around until he got to a fence post and then bash thier heads.I seen him do it twice. I asked what happened when he missed the tail and he told me he only did it once and learned never to miss.

I'd thought of that ranger. It eliminates one dilemma, but creates another. What if I want them to do something else in the future? I think I'd hold a grudge.

That's part of my problem here Dphar. Rabies is on the rise here and in surounding counties and just this small part of our county seems to be infested with them.

Well, I spoke too soon. I caught a skunk yesterday and while staying upwind, this particular animal must have had some reserves. He tried his best, but I managed to avoid the stink. While getting him out of the coon cuff I had to go near the tree I anchored to. My god that was about the strongest wiff of skunk I have ever got. It had the burnt tire smell and burned by nose.

The smell of a skunk is entirel;y differnt at 5 ft vs a whiff coming from 50-100yds away.Some of it close will make you puke

I've had the pleasure of being sprayed! I was trapping around a chicken coop, came around the corner planning on seeing the coon in my trap..nope, before i got the 22 upholstered, he'd let me have it! It really is a pretty fluorescent green color,you gotta be really close t see that, lol! it aint just liquid either, there is solids mixed in, its about the size of rice, but its smaller in diameter..I dont recommend it!