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Posted on 10/06/2025 2:23:20 AM PDT by Hot Tabasco
Yesterday evening I killed a skunk in my backyard and left it to be picked up this morning. I set my trail camera out because when I killed a skunk previously, it was gone by morning and I was hoping it would happen again.
Sure enough, it was gone but no photos on the camera. There was a brief blur but nothing else.
This is a mystery to me and the only thing I can think of is that an owl might have swooped in and snatched it up.
Any thoughts? I know the camera was working because later last night it captured my neighbor letting out her dog.
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Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
Saturday I saw a beaver that was pulling a dead beaver out of the road.
They can do both. In both instances they carry off to eat elsewhere or to food cache although caching usually does not occur until winter.
It turns out the skunks are digging up grubs. In our yard, the large grubs were 17 year locust larva.
I learned about grub control stuff and applied it to the yard. The skunks quit coming because the grubs were dead
I have trapped skunks in my live trap. I shot them with my .22 pistol with no stink emissions.
This is why I have my cameras on continuously recording, not just events. Bits are cheap. A 10T WD Purple surveillance drive is currently $257 and will store more than two weeks of video for half a dozen 4k cameras.
Of course, having wired cameras makes a big difference.
My son was on summer staff at a youth camp in upper Michigan a few years ago. They had a skunk invasion so they set out some live traps.
One day he sent us a video of a skunk in a trap as he was walking along the camp waterfront.
He was singing a song. “Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go”
SPLASH as the trap went off the dock.
I use trail cams, often with two of them watching the same area. I use two of them because they often do not trigger. For example, an elk will walk into the cam’s viewing area. One will trigger and give images, the other won’t. I’ve tried several major camera brands, they all miss taking pictures every now and then.
So, are there bags in or under your trees?
It sounds like you have the right idea. Tie it to a stake and you may get your picture.
It was the owl. They are impervious to skunk smell.
Similar happened to me with the game camera thing. I would get pictures of deer in my yard at night all the time. But wanted some pics of the coyotes that are around. So I set up a game camera with a dead raccoon (that I caught in my chicken coop) wired to a tree in front of the camera.
I ran piano wire thru the hindquarters to the tree. The camera shot three shots. First two, raccoon was there. Third, no raccoon. Just gone. No predator showed up.
Now, I live trap the raccoons, possums, skunks, whatever. And take them downtown Cincinnati to the tent cities they set up.
If I still lived on Grosse Ile, I’d do the same thing and drop them off in downtown Detroit!
Totally weird. This happened out in the western part of my state. Experts still don't know what the turkeys were doing.
Here’s a tip for ya’ll. The best way to discard cooking oil is to leave your pan oil laden cookware outdoors overnight and let the raccoons have at it. They’d lick my pans squeaky clean.
We had a rabbit population that was out of control, and they were destroying my wife’s garden, so I told her I would trap the rabbits and get rid of them. (I am in a neighborhood, so I don’t have the option of picking them off)
I get the trap set, and one night, as I am sleeping with my windows open, I am having dreams of skunks. I woke to my wife whispering “Wake up! I think there’s a skunk in the trap!”
Sure enough, in my groggy state, I peered out the window at the trap and could see black and white in it. It was about 5 AM and just barely light, and I thought if I could release it quickly, I might be able to sleep another hour before I had to get up for work. So I grabbed a pair of pants, pulled them on commando-style if you get my drift, put on a t-shirt and shoes, and still completely befuddled by sleep, shuffled out to the backyard to release the skunk.
Now, this was a first for me. Never had to release a skunk, but I had talked with my boss about it and he said it was safe as long as you held a sheet or beach towel in front of you as you walked calmly and slowly towards the skunk, then you could gently cover the cage with it and let the skunk out of the trap.
This all sounded reasonable when you were in an office with fluorescent lights discussing it before lunch, but at 5 AM with a real, smelly skunk in your trap...well, I was a little nervous. But he had sounded confident, so I thought it should be just as he said. I walked slowly towards the skunk, which stopped moving as I approached. I knew this, because the tinkling sound of rustling inside the cage trap suddenly stopped, and the silence seemed...well...ominous to me! But on I went.
I reached the trap, and bending over, very gently laid the towel over the top. So far so good.
Unfortunately, as I bent and opened the other end of the trap to allow the skunk to run out, my pants started to slip down. I had grabbed a baggy pair of pants that really didn’t fit, and didn’t take the time to put on a belt. So just as the skunk exited the trap, my pants started to go, and it was a full moon starting to rise. I desperately cinched my elbow to my side, and looked up to see my wife’s grinning face in the window looking out at me.
I suddenly had this instantaneous vision of me, getting my fifteen minutes of Internet Fame from a viral YouTube video posting by my wife from her phone.
In this video, here I am with my pants falling completely to the ground as the skunk exits the trap. It stops, and gives me a spray right in my face before waddling off. Me, with my naked chalk-white butt completely exposed, blinded by skunk spray, groping around and gasping before tripping over the empty trap and falling to the ground.
All this went through my mind in a flash, and to my relief, my pants didn’t go down, the skunk didn’t pause, and my wife didn’t have a phone recording the whole thing! But she was grinning as she saw me struggling to keep my pants up!
Just when I thought I had seen everything!
Of course the video loops to make the turkeys’ march endless, but it is still a little shocking.
At least now we know what the native Americans were doing, too. Nature has more oddities in it than we can imagine.
Ain't that the truth!
The Democrats probably picked it up to become the 2028 pick to run for President.
There is probably one female and the rest are males ... hoping.
You have The Walking Stink. This is a zombie skunk you keep shooting.
You must shoot it in the head.
I was out walking in the suburb I live in earlier this summer and a skunk and I locked eyes on each other at about 10 to 15 feet apart. I simply kept walking away from it and nothing happened fortunately. It was too close for comfort though.
This. If skunks are digging up your lawn then you have a motherlode of grubs making your lawn a skunk buffet.
Get rid of the grubs and the skunks won’t bother your lawn.
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