To be fair, they do eat J.B. grubs. To my knowledge, they don’t eat J.B. adults.
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Skunks dig up and eat nests of yellow jacket wasps. I like skunks and would keep them around. I have live trapped them accidentally, and have relocated them without incident.
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Yep…they come to the beehives at night…scratch at the front door…and bees being bees…pile out to investigate, and the skunks eat them as fast as they can.
(Piles of poop mostly honeybees tells the tale if anyone is a doubter.)
I put duct tape on the beehives…with roofing nails pushed through the sticky side…to give the varmints some sharpness of mind … and it worked.
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My neighbor usually takes care of any nearby skunks. I don’t usually have any input, but after reading this thread I think I am of the opinion that I’d rather have skunks than Japanese beetles. They were horrible last year. We put out those bags (with mating scent or something?) to capture as many as possible. It worked for a good portion, but there is only so much a bag can hold… it would fill up in a day or two.
Give those bags to your neighbors. Hanging those traps with pheromone lures were the absolute worst thing I ever did for J.B.'s
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Wow, skunks seem pretty controversial here with all these stories. I’ve lived with skunks in the area for most of my life and have never heard of any bad stories about them besides spraying an occasional dog- no horror stories about such dogs passing on the issue by rubbing it all over someone’s house. The other issue is if you keep bees.
And one other thing, during low food times they may go into a squirllintaor trap to get bait which is a tough one to release them from. Any live trap with a safety door is easy- you just approach the trap slowly holding tarp in front of you, then gently cover all the trap but the escape door and open the door with gloved hands. If you are gentle about it the skunk probably won’t spray, and won’t immediately leave the trap either. They are the calmest mammals on the planet- because everything tends to avoid them they think we are all their friends as long as we don’t make sudden movements.
I can understand someone eliminating a skunk from their property to protect their dogs or bees, but otherwise I always vote for wildlife that isn’t really doing any harm. I don’t feel superior to them or any more entitled to life. Not that I won’t kill any animal on my property that takes my fruit! Not because I’m better, but because I’m stronger.
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My neighbors also use the bags, and I don’t currently have any fruit trees in the area I placed them other than pawpaws, and JBs don’t seem to bother them (at least not yet?). Even if I attract more to the bags now, I see it as an “investment” in limited population for future years when I actually have trees worthwhile to protect.
I thought the same way. Then I figured out I was drawing every damn J.B. within scent range to my traps. Once I stopped hanging the bags with pheromone bait the number of J.B.s I was dealing with dropped dramatically.
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I get what you are saying… but did you happen to try it out for multiple years in a row? That is the approach I intend to go with, to see if I am able to make a decent dent in the local population. Just like I dutifully dispose of every stink bug I can trap. As I said before, I’d prefer the skunks haha. Our dog is trained well enough not to chase them, we get her to sit and watch when she sees deer and rabbits. It’s the same strategy with any skunks.
5 years straight. I thought sure I was putting a dent in them. Every year it got worse, and worse, and worse. Then I realized it was worse after using the traps than it was before using them…
You will never make a dent in the population. Never. For every one you catch, there’s another ten you don’t. Guess what those ten do? They lay eggs on your property.
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That’s fair! I guess you either need more traps or to spray plants individually. I’m glad you’ve already performed this experiment for me so I don’t have to watch it play out. Possibly there is a better way… Maybe making a bigger bag.
First time I read this, I thought you were saying the tree was covered in skunks!
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Now that would be a sight to see!
And smell…
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Good luck man. I added more lures and bags every year. Had them hanging all over the place. Meanwhile I was out most every day with a sprayer full of Sevin trying to save my birch, sycamore, and linden trees. Not even to mention my roses and grapes.
I’m not the only one who has tried the bags/pheromone traps and learned it was a losing proposition.
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@alan ---- what you said about — not because you are superior or more deserving of life… I agree with you on that completely… even on skunks. I could live with them myself… i could deal with an accidental spraying… when i was trapping any time i caught a skunk or civit cat (which is a skunk but with fine fur…similar to mink or muskrat)… I respected their contribution by always harvesting, skinning, taking proper care of the fur… lots of trappers would just discard a skunk and not skin it… but I have skinned and processed many.
Now when it comes to them being considered a pest at my home… I have a sweet little redhead for my wife of 37 years… and she is not comfortable at all with wild critters in the back yard… especially skunks or possum. She will not even go out on the back porch at night for weeks after a skunk sighting…
It sounds like you have a great respect for most critters… but that may end if they are eating your fruit. I can agree with you on that.
But I will also add in there… any critter that causes my wife so much stress… since I have an abundance of hunting and trapping skills… well that critter is not going to be around long.
TNHunter
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As they say, happy wife, happy life.
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Amen Brother !!!
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Thumbs up to that. We have an “abundance” of yellow jackets here and I’m happy to have some skunks around. They’re obviously tough if they can attack a nest of those!
I once spent some time on a backwoods farm in a log cabin with a friend. He had a chicken coop fairly close to the house. One night I heard the chickens stirring something was in the coop. I took my pistol and a spotlight and shot a skunk that was coming out of the chicken coop. Hit it right behind its head and amazingly it didn’t spray. It did smell but it didn’t spray, no one wanted to full with it we should’ve buried it. But no one did. Everyone was amazed that it did not spray. About a week later it had decomposed and it sent glands burst. Being so close to the house it was almost unbearable for weeks . So I learn to bury skunks or at least get them away from the house😀
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