Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Drown a Skunk

Every skunk I catch in a live trap gets shot. They spray every time. My wife is a great live trap setter. We average about thirty a year I would think.

I thought the tarp over the trap helped but I still got stunk up most of the time. Leave your wallet and belt in the house. Wear rubber boots, coveralls, and a ball cap. You still are going to stink but it easier to clean up. I leave the clothes and boots outside for a few days and they are tolerable to wear again but are stored in the barn.

Many over the years in 8” irrigation pipe.

I live on a farm and have skunks around quite often. Since they are excellent mousers, and also eat yellow jackets, I give them a pass. Ymmv.

"Never went grouse hunting again" because of that? WOW.

Maybe indoor sports are more suited to the lad and he wasn't going to be a bird hunter anyways. Just sayin'.

No video, but when I say place I mean slowly lower into the water tank. Then while that's taking place open the grave space and later slide skunk in final resting place. Memorialize as you wish.

By the way, the trap is covered by a tarp so Mr skunk can't see you

People don't realize they mouse better than any cat ever could. We trap them for a living, and might have one out of 100 spray. Not a direct shot, just a little warning sign when you cover them. If you're going to dispatch with a firearm, never shoot them in the head. First they will just about always spray, and second if they do happen to have the rabies virus you will be exposing it to the air for a possible exposure. We euthanize with a CO2 chamber, they go lights out quickly. Others will use chloroform, and some use a lethal injection from a syringe pole. Be careful about using drowning as a euthanization method,(or at least talking about it) as you may be exposing yourself to a felony animal cruelty charge unknowingly. Just a heads up.

I'd like to hear more about the CO2 method

Had one fall down into the 12' pvc pipe that our hydrant comes up out of.

He's in there alive. Right next to our bard door. I don't want to shoot and risk putting a hole in on of the water lines. I tried to give him something to climb up out of there, but that didn't work.

So I ended up gassing him with propane. After gassing him and I was sure he was dead, I attached a big treble to a pole and removed him.

Over the past 20 years here at the stone yard we've had an on going battle with the ground hogs. Several years ago the bastards dug a hole underneath my building under the show room. We'd fill it in and they'd open it back up. We'd live trap them and relocate or shoot them, but more would move in. In the mean time, we had a resident skunk living around here. It was almost all white and one of my guys named it Snowball. Snowball never really bothered anyone until one day he decided to take up residence in that groundhog hole. The whole building stunk. Snowball crossed the line. I've got this crazy redneck guy that works for me who hunts and traps. He suggested swim lessons. So my son brought in his live trap and they covered it ahead of time with a piece of a blue tarp. The next morning Snowball was in the trap. They filled up the bucket on the wheel loader with water, picked up the trap real careful and lowered him into the bucket. Snowball failed his swimming test and he never sprayed.

After that, we filled in the ground hog hole one last time and covered it with a big ass piece of flagstone. They tried to dig it back open, but they have failed.

Just stumbled across this post - is it better to place them in a tank full of water or better to put them in an empty tank and slowly fill with water?

LOL.

It's best to stand 20 yards away, shoot 'em in the head, then give the neighbor's kid $5 to bag it and put it in a dumpster a couple of blocks away.


Great first post!

Gas them? How does that work, and what kind of gas?

As an ADC guy I have trapped many, as a target in pvc tube traps. Dispatch in water. If in a foothold acetone injected in chest cavity, done in 20 seconds no spray.

last year i had 7 that lived under the air conditioning unit. i live trapped them all, one at a time. put a tarp over the trap and lowered them into a water trough for swimming lessons.

Guess Hunts didn't see your question. Yes it's a Woodsman, Second Series. Finest .22 ever made IMHO.

CO2 works great. They don't get alarmed unless there is audible and/or visible commotion, so no spray usually. I have placed trapped skunk and trap (covered with old tarp) into a big lawn/leaf bag, then used a CO2 extinguisher. The noise may be unpleasant enough to agitate your trapped skunk. A smallish block of dry ice will generally do the same job. Avoid direct contact with the ice for both you and the skunk.

Drowning seems to be fairly easy when they have been trapped. I tie some paracord to the trap before baiting and setting, then fix up an Evel Knievel ramp leading just to the rim of a horse tank with deep-enough water. Pull the cord slowly and when the ramp quits, Senor Skunk and trap sink quickly in the water. Remove trap and skunk in an hour or two, empty the trap and dispose of the polecat. I have not been sprayed. yet

I'm interested in a humane kill, even for these pests, so a firearm is another choice when they are out and about and you are packing. Preferred armament for me is small gauge shotgun (think 20 gauge or smaller) but a small caliber belt gun can work fine. Wadcutters in my 32 S & W Long are very effective for head shots. A 22 short is also an easy way to head-shoot a trapped skunk. I have not been as pleased with the results when a non-trapped skunk is hit anywhere besides the CNS with a single slug, like from a 22. They seem to be a big target, but most of that is hair and a hit to the body often is not an immediately lethal wound, which can result in a spraying episode.

I use a fairly heavy duty live trap, never set close to our house. Shoot them with a 22LR from about 30 feet, and let them air out for a day or two, then dispose of appropriately. Will leave the trap out in the weather until it's been through a good rain shower or two, then put it back under the lean to, ready for the next small critter that's messing with stuff. Trap may still have a slight skunk odor, but definitely bearable.

Texas heart shot with a .30-06. I was returning from an unsuccessful deer hunt on the back of the farm. 300 yards to the house, and the stink beat me home!

A syringe attached to a painters pole is the ticket. 10 CC's of cheap vodka into the chest cavity and they are typically down before the plunger is all the way in. I have killed probably 50 of them like this and only had 1 spray.

An update on this old post.

Last Winter/Spring they moved back in under our office again. We set up a trail cam so we could see what it was doing and set the live trap.

A bunch of us didn't think that swimming lessons was very cool, so we decided to shoot it this time. After a few days, we got our skunk. The trap was set in front of the hole between the shrubs and the building. My son shot it in the head with a 22 and the SOB sprayed all over the side of the building.

We filled the hole with concrete and laid flagstone over top of it. A few weeks later, we had another one dig a new hole next to that and moved in. We set everything back up and baited. One of my truck drivers said, " Don't shoot it, just cover it up and put it in the back of YOUR truck and take it down to the park and let it go". About a mile away from here is a county park on the other side of the river, so the SOB can't come back. I told him if that's what he wanted to do, he could put in his truck and take it down to the park. He said OK just to prove me wrong. The next morning we had our skunk. We had covered the trap with black plastic prior with a string on the handle. He picked it up real slow and put in the back of his truck and took it down the road and let it go. No spray.