A skunk can turn over a lawn and strip the low fruit off your plants in a single night of digging. The good news is skunks are not aggressive and rarely spray unless cornered. The bad news is they’ll keep coming back as long as your garden has grubs and ripe vegetables. Here’s how to stop them.
How to Tell It’s a Skunk, Not Something Else
Before you act, make sure skunks are the culprit.
- Cone-shaped holes in the lawn, a couple of inches wide and deep, usually in groups after rain when grubs move near the surface. Skunk holes are neat, not the torn-up mess a raccoon leaves.
- Five-toed tracks with visible claw marks, the front feet carrying longer digging claws.
- Droppings that look like cat droppings but often contain insect parts, seeds, and berry skins.
- Ground-level damage. Skunks eat ripe tomatoes, melons, and cucumbers at soil level and pull up root vegetables. Unlike deer or rabbits, they don’t eat leaves or stems.
Skunk vs. raccoon: Raccoons rip up big patches of sod and scatter debris. Skunks leave neat individual holes. If the lawn looks like someone took tiny divots out of it, that’s a skunk.
Fencing That Actually Keeps Skunks Out
Skunks don’t climb well, so a fence doesn’t need to be tall, it needs to be buried.
- Height and material: A 3-foot fence is plenty. Use 1/4 inch hardware cloth or 19-gauge welded wire, not chicken wire, which skunks can bend open with their noses.
- The underground barrier: Dig a trench several inches deep along the fence line, bury the bottom of the mesh, and bend the last few inches outward at a right angle. That L-footer stops them from digging under.
- Gates: Make sure gates sit tight against the ground with no more than a 1-inch gap, and add a mesh kick plate along the bottom.
A low strand of electric fencing a few inches off the ground, on the outside of the fence, adds real deterrence during skunk season. Check local rules first.
Repellents: A Backup, Not a Fix
Repellents help, but they rarely solve a skunk problem on their own.
- Hot pepper sprays. Capsaicin, the compound that makes peppers hot, irritates a skunk’s nose and mouth when it sniffs or tastes treated areas. It washes off in rain and needs reapplication every few days.
- Predator urine. Coyote or fox urine can trigger a skunk’s instinct to avoid an area, but it loses potency after rain and has to be reapplied.
- Ultrasonic devices. Not proven against skunks, and they get used to the sound quickly. Skip them as a primary deterrent.
Avoid the harmful stuff: Don’t use mothballs, ammonia, or bleach, and don’t use any unregistered pesticide. Mothballs are toxic to pets, kids, and the environment, and using them outdoors for wildlife is against federal law.
Make Your Garden Less Inviting
Long-term, the goal is to remove what skunks want.
- Clear brush piles and wood stacks near the garden, and keep the grass mowed short.
- Pick ripe vegetables and fallen fruit daily, and clean up anything overripe on the ground.
- Seal gaps under sheds and decking with 1/4 inch hardware cloth buried a few inches down.
Cut Off the Grubs
Skunks dig for grubs, the beetle larvae in your soil. If your lawn is full of grubs, skunks will keep coming back no matter what else you do.
- Beneficial nematodes are microscopic roundworms that kill grubs in the soil. They’re safe for pets and plants. Apply them in late summer or early fall when grubs are near the surface.
- Milky spore targets Japanese beetle grubs specifically and lasts for years once established, though it takes a season or two to build up.
Humane Removal When Nothing Else Works
If a skunk has denned under a shed or deck and won’t leave, live trapping is the standard next step, but check your state and local rules first, since many places require a permit or ban relocation outright.
Use a covered live trap at least 32 inches long. The cover keeps the skunk calmer and lowers the odds of a spray. Bait with canned cat food, sardines, peanut butter, or marshmallows, and set it near the den entrance at dusk. For a skunk under a shed or deck, a one-way exclusion door over the entry point is often cleaner, it lets the skunk out but not back in. Leave it for a few days, then seal the entrance permanently.
Frequently Asked Questions
Only if it feels threatened. A dog that runs up on a skunk will probably get sprayed. Keep dogs leashed from dusk through dawn, when skunks are active. If your dog gets sprayed, wash it with a mix of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and dish soap.
They eat the ripe tomatoes that hit the ground, not the plant itself, plus any insects near the base. Keep low-growing fruit fenced or caged and harvest often.
No real evidence for it. The smell might briefly mask other scents, but it won’t keep a skunk away from food. Use the grounds in your compost instead.
Fill them with topsoil and tamp it down, then water to settle. If they keep re-digging the same spots, the soil has grubs, so treat with beneficial nematodes and the digging stops.
Not much, if you leave them alone. They’re not aggressive and will retreat if given space. The real concerns are plant and lawn damage, a possible spray if startled, and the small rabies risk. A skunk out in the daytime is a warning sign worth calling about.
They’re most active from dusk through midnight and again just before dawn. In warm months, peak garden activity is in the evening, so that’s when to set traps or apply repellents.
