Skunks eat just about anything they can get their paws on. They are true omnivores with a diet that shifts season by season, ranging from grubs, beetles, and crickets in warmer months to fruit, small rodents, bird eggs, and human garbage year-round. That flexible appetite is exactly why they end up in yards: if your property offers easy food, shelter, or both, a skunk will eventually find it. Keeping them away requires understanding what draws them in and then systematically removing those attractants.
A Skunk’s Diet Through the Seasons
Insects make up the largest share of a striped skunk’s diet during spring and summer. Grubs are the signature target. Skunks dig shallow, cone-shaped holes in lawns to pull beetle larvae out of the soil, and a single skunk can tear through a surprising amount of turf in one night. They also eat grasshoppers, crickets, caterpillars, and wasps, sometimes digging up ground-nesting wasp colonies and eating the larvae inside. This insect-heavy diet is actually beneficial for homeowners and farmers, since skunks consume many of the same pests that damage gardens and crops.1PubMed. Nutrition and behavior of striped skunks
As summer fades and insects become scarcer, skunks shift toward fruit, berries, corn, and other plant matter. They will eat fallen apples, mulberries, and blackberries from the ground. They also consume small mammals like mice and voles, raid bird nests for eggs, and scavenge carrion when they find it. Skunks are not skilled hunters compared to weasels or foxes; they rely more on foraging and opportunism. Their claws are built for digging rather than catching fast prey.
In suburban neighborhoods, the diet expands to include things nature never intended: pet food left on porches, unsecured garbage, birdseed spilled under feeders, and compost piles full of kitchen scraps. Skunks have a keen sense of smell and poor eyesight, so they navigate toward food sources largely by scent. A bowl of cat food on a back patio is, from a skunk’s perspective, an open invitation.
Why Skunks Choose Your Yard
Food is the primary draw, but shelter runs a close second. Skunks are burrowers that look for dark, enclosed spaces to den in during the day. The gap under a raised deck, a porch with an open lattice, a garden shed with a dirt floor, or a crawl space with a cracked vent cover all look like prime real estate to a skunk. A study tracking suburban striped skunks found that about 58% of the dens they used during the day were associated with human structures.2Journal of Mammalogy. Den use and heterothermy during winter in free-living, suburban striped skunks That means more than half the time, suburban skunks are sleeping under someone’s house, deck, or outbuilding rather than in a natural burrow.
Water sources also play a role. Birdbaths, pet water bowls, leaky outdoor faucets, and even low spots in a yard that collect rainwater can attract skunks. They do not need much, but consistent water near a food source and a potential den site makes a yard especially appealing.
Yards with lots of ground cover also tend to attract skunks. Overgrown shrubs, woodpiles, rock walls, and dense ground-level vegetation provide the kind of low, sheltered corridors skunks prefer when moving around at night. They are not climbers and generally stay close to the ground, so anything that gives them cover at ankle height works in their favor.
When Skunks Are Most Active in Your Neighborhood
Skunks are nocturnal, so most encounters happen at dusk or after dark. But their activity levels change dramatically across the year, and knowing the seasonal pattern helps predict when conflicts are most likely.
Research tracking free-living suburban skunks through an entire year identified four distinct activity stages. Winter, roughly November through late December, is the quietest period. Skunks do not truly hibernate, but they enter a state of reduced activity and may stay in their dens for days or weeks at a time, living off stored fat. Males become dramatically more active during the mating period in late February and March, with their daily activity bouts averaging around 11.6 hours. Females are less active during mating season, averaging about 10.2 hours per bout.3Oxford Academic. Reproductive and Environmental Drivers of Time and Activity Budgets of Striped Skunks
The pattern flips after mating season. Females become most active during late June and July, when they are nursing kits and eventually leading them on foraging trips. This is the period when you are most likely to see a mother skunk walking across your yard with a line of small kits trailing behind her. By late summer and early fall, both sexes ramp up foraging to build fat reserves before winter, and females have their longest daily activity bouts during this fattening period.3Oxford Academic. Reproductive and Environmental Drivers of Time and Activity Budgets of Striped Skunks
For homeowners, the practical takeaway is that skunk encounters peak twice: once in late winter and early spring when males roam widely looking for mates, and again in mid-to-late summer when mothers and their young are foraging intensively. The late summer period is often when lawn damage from grub-digging is worst, because skunks are feeding aggressively and teaching their young where to find food.
How to Keep Skunks Out of Your Yard
Skunk deterrence is almost entirely about removing the things that attracted them in the first place. No single trick works reliably on its own, but a combination of changes usually does the job.
Eliminate Food Sources
This is the most important step and the one most people skip or do halfway. A few specific changes make a large difference:
- Pet food: Never leave dog or cat food outside overnight. If you feed pets outdoors, pick up bowls before dusk.
- Garbage: Use cans with tight-fitting or locking lids. Bungee cords across the top work in a pinch. Put trash out the morning of pickup, not the night before.
- Bird feeders: Spilled seed on the ground attracts skunks and rodents. Switch to no-mess seed blends, use a tray to catch spillage, or bring feeders in at night.
- Fallen fruit: If you have fruit trees, collect fallen fruit regularly. Rotting fruit on the ground is one of the strongest scent attractants for skunks in late summer.
- Compost: Use an enclosed compost bin rather than an open pile. Avoid adding meat, dairy, or oily scraps to compost that skunks could access.
- Grubs: If skunks are digging up your lawn, the root cause is often a grub infestation. Treating the lawn with beneficial nematodes or milky spore in late summer reduces the grub population, which in turn makes your yard less interesting to skunks.
Block Access to Shelter
Since suburban skunks so heavily favor human structures for denning, physically closing off those spaces is critical. Install hardware cloth or heavy-gauge galvanized mesh (not chicken wire, which skunks can tear through) around the base of decks, porches, sheds, and crawl spaces. Bury the mesh at least 30 centimeters into the ground and angle the bottom outward in an L-shape, because skunks will try to dig under a barrier that stops at soil level.
Before sealing any space, make sure no skunk is already inside. The simplest test is to loosely stuff the opening with newspaper or crumpled paper and check it for several nights. If the paper stays undisturbed for three or four consecutive nights, the space is likely empty and safe to seal. If you seal a skunk inside, you will create a much worse problem. During spring and early summer, be especially cautious: a mother with kits may be denning underneath, and sealing the entrance could trap the young inside.
Make the Yard Less Comfortable
Motion-activated lights and sprinklers can deter skunks in the short term, though skunks living in suburban areas tend to habituate to disturbances over time. Lights are more effective when combined with a sprinkler, because the sudden burst of water is harder for a skunk to ignore than light alone. Place them along fence lines and near known entry points.
Trim low-growing shrubs and clear brush piles to remove ground-level cover. Skunks feel exposed in open, well-lit spaces and are less likely to linger in a yard that does not offer hiding spots. Stack firewood on a raised platform rather than directly on the ground, and keep it away from the house.
Commercial repellents based on capsaicin or predator urine are widely sold but have mixed results. Most wildlife professionals consider them a supplementary measure, not a primary one. They need frequent reapplication, especially after rain, and a well-fed skunk with a den already established nearby may simply tolerate the smell.
Why Trapping and Relocating Rarely Solves the Problem
Many homeowners assume the fastest fix is to trap the skunk and drive it somewhere far away. In practice, this approach has more problems than it solves. Wildlife professionals generally advise against translocation for several reasons: it is often illegal without a permit, it raises disease-transmission concerns, it stresses the animal, and relocated skunks frequently die in unfamiliar territory or simply attempt to return home.4USDA APHIS. Wildlife Translocation
There is also a practical reality that trapping ignores: if your yard still has food and shelter, removing one skunk just opens the territory for the next one. Skunks are not rare in suburban areas, and an attractive yard will be reoccupied quickly. The long-term solution is always habitat modification rather than removal of individual animals.
If a skunk has already denned under your home and you need it gone, the most humane and effective approach is one-way exclusion. A wildlife control professional can install a one-way door over the den entrance that lets the skunk leave but not re-enter. Once the animal has been out for several consecutive nights, the entrance is permanently sealed. This avoids the stress and legal issues of trapping and does not dump the problem into someone else’s neighborhood.
What Skunk Spray Can Do to Your Pets
Everyone knows skunk spray smells terrible, but fewer people realize it can cause real medical problems for pets. The spray is an oily, sulfur-rich secretion from glands near the base of the tail, and skunks can aim it with surprising accuracy at distances of several meters. Dogs are the most common victims because they tend to investigate skunks up close.
Beyond the overwhelming odor, the chemical compounds in skunk musk (primarily thiols and thioacetates) can damage red blood cells. Laboratory research has shown that exposure to skunk musk causes methemoglobin formation and Heinz bodies in blood samples from dogs and cats. The changes were dose-dependent and appeared within four hours, worsening over 24 to 72 hours.5PubMed. Skunk musk causes methemoglobin and Heinz body formation in vitro In plain terms, the chemicals in the spray can reduce the blood’s ability to carry oxygen and damage individual red blood cells. Dogs sprayed directly in the face at close range are at the highest risk, and small dogs are more vulnerable than large ones simply because of body size relative to the dose.
If your dog gets sprayed, watch for signs like lethargy, pale or brownish gums, vomiting, or difficulty breathing in the hours after the encounter. Most sprayed dogs just smell awful and recover without medical intervention, but a dog that seems unwell after a direct facial spray should see a veterinarian. For deodorizing, the classic home remedy of a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and dish soap works far better than tomato juice, which mainly masks the smell rather than breaking down the sulfur compounds. Avoid getting any cleaning solution in the dog’s eyes or ears.
Skunks and Rabies
Skunks are one of the primary wildlife reservoirs for rabies in North America, along with raccoons, bats, and foxes. This is the most serious health concern associated with having skunks in your yard. A skunk that is active during the day, staggering, unusually aggressive, or seemingly tame and approachable may be rabid, though daytime activity alone does not confirm rabies, since nursing mothers sometimes forage during daylight hours in summer.
Rabies virus transmission between wildlife species is well documented. Over a 20-year review period, skunks were the most common non-reservoir species to be reported with the raccoon rabies variant, and domestic animals were the most commonly reported non-reservoir animals infected with skunk-associated rabies.6PLOS ONE. Right Place, Wrong Species: A 20-Year Review of Rabies Virus Cross Species Transmission among Terrestrial Mammals in the United States That means skunks can both catch rabies from raccoons in their area and pass their own rabies strains to pets and other animals. Keeping dogs and cats current on rabies vaccinations is the single most important thing you can do to protect against this risk, regardless of whether you succeed in keeping skunks out of your yard entirely.
Never approach or attempt to handle a skunk yourself, even one that appears calm. If you find a skunk behaving strangely or a dead skunk on your property, contact your local animal control agency rather than touching it. Rabies is transmitted through saliva, so any bite or scratch from a potentially rabid animal requires immediate medical attention.
Living With Skunks Rather Than Fighting Them
It is worth stepping back from the pest-control framing to acknowledge that skunks living near your property are not all downside. Their appetite for grubs, beetles, and small rodents means they provide genuine pest control. A skunk working through your lawn at night may be eating the very grub population that would otherwise kill patches of grass by fall. They also eat mice and voles that can damage gardens and find their way into homes.
In many cases, a skunk passing through your yard at night is not a problem that needs solving. Problems tend to start only when a skunk decides to den on your property, or when unsecured food sources create a nightly routine. If you can tolerate the occasional nighttime visitor without leaving food out, the skunk may move on by itself once the local insect supply changes. The homeowners who run into recurring skunk trouble are almost always the ones with a persistent attractant they have not identified: a neighbor feeding outdoor cats, a compost pile that was not properly enclosed, or an old deck with open gaps that has been a den site for years.
For the skunks that do settle in, the approach that works is patient and unglamorous: remove the food, close off the shelter, and let the skunk decide to leave on its own terms. Skunks are not aggressive by nature. They spray only as a last resort after a series of warning signals that include foot-stomping, tail-raising, and backing up. Give them space, and they will generally give you the same courtesy.