How to Get Rid of Skunks

Skunks are solitary creatures, but an encounter with one can spell bad news. Making sure you never have to deal with skunks around your home could be a good idea. They can be a health and safety hazard. Here’s how you can keep skunks out of your yard.

Why Do I Have Skunks?

Skunks are attracted to several things around your home. They like the cover that shrubbery, woodpiles, and other landscaping features offer. They also may like the garden you have in the back with all the tasty vegetables and flowers. They sometimes go through the trash and open garbage bags.

The food sources and hiding places can be a massive draw to your home, and by eliminating these attractors, you can go a long way to getting rid of your skunk problem. When you think you have skunks around, you should go through what might be attracting them.

How Do I Get Rid of Skunks?

There are a few different things you can do to get rid of skunks around your home. Let’s take a look at how to keep skunks out of your yard.

Prevention

When you want to make sure you aren’t attracting skunks, there are a few things you should consider. Here’s what you need to know to keep them from ever coming onto your property in the first place.

• Get rid of food outdoors – If you have pets, make sure they don’t have food outside at all hours of the night, or you could be attracting lots of creatures. Skunks will come into your yard for a quick meal, so make sure there’s nothing outside for them to eat.
• Improve your trash cans – tight-fitting lids help prevent all kinds of animals from digging through your trash. When you don’t have a way for them to get into your trash, they won’t be as tempted to come back all the time.
• Get rid of their hiding places – when you clean up your yard, there are fewer places for them to hide. Brush piles and overgrown landscaping can really help cover skunk tracks and offer them places to hide from predators. Getting rid of them discourages them from hanging around.
• Put up fencing – Fencing around your home can help keep them out, but if you can’t go that far, putting up fencing around gardens and around home features like the porch stairs or underneath your house. Keeping them from getting into their hiding places goes a long way to prevention.

Skunk Repellents

If prevention doesn’t work, you might want to learn how to keep skunks away. Here are a few ways you can handle the problem if it’s already happening.

Repellants come in the form of liquid and granular options. They’re all-natural and won’t harm other animals around your property. They can help make your yard less hospitable for skunks while also ensuring you don’t accidentally harm other animals you’ve got in the area.

Those repellents are safe to use in areas that have endangered or protected species. You can also help protect your pets. These are safe alternatives to poison or other dangerous prevention methods.

A bigger choice could be an electronic repellent that senses motion and sprays water and makes sounds to condition animals to stay away from your yard. This is a big step, but if you have a number of animal pests that come around and nothing else has worked, this could be a great choice.

Call a Professional

Professionals can identify where animals might be hiding and how to repel skunks. They have experience building prevention and treatment plans and can remove any nuisance animals that don’t respond to treatments.

You should call a professional if you don’t know how to handle the problem yourself, or you’ve tried a number of alternatives and don’t see any relief with your issue. A professional can safely remove and prevent these pests without harming protected species or your own pets.

Getting Rid of Skunks

It’s always best to handle a skunk problem right away to prevent any nasty encounters that can leave lasting odors around. Skunks can also carry diseases that you definitely don’t want around, so go through all the prevention tips to ensure you don’t have revisits.

With skunks, you aren’t going to have an infestation because they’re solitary animals. They can cause a lot of nuisance, but once you’ve identified that one is coming around, it’s not so hard to get rid of it and prevent others from coming back. Skunk deterrents aren’t tough to figure out.

Consult a professional if you want to be sure that the skunk doesn’t come around again. A professional can ensure that something doesn’t keep happening and that you’re covered all around. The skunk problem can be a quick fix if you know where to look, and you take the right measures. Don’t get caught unaware, and don’t wait.