What Do Skunk Holes Look Like
Skunks are a frustrating animal that has a truly frustrating weapon that can send humans an animal running for their lives. People will cross the street to get away from a skunk. Seeing one is a moment of sheer terror and avoiding it without getting sprayed can be very difficult once it has seen you. They can spray in under a second with deadly accuracy and can coat you in a smell so powerful that it is detectable at just 11 parts per million. This makes skunks one of the most problematic and dangerous animals to occupy your property. While raccoons can defecate roundworm spores that can be avoided with safety precautions. Nothing can protect you from an angry skunk. This is made worse in mating season when skunk males will spray each other in the open in a battle for the female they desire. This can be so aggressive that if it happens on your property the smell will last for months.
If you have holes all over your yard then it could be several animals. However, skunk holes are very different from most types of holes. Skunks, of course, normally prefer to burrow under a ground-level structure. This makes them feel safer especially if it’s a pregnant mother. Male skunks may just burrow in the ground not near to any structural. The way to find out if it is a skunk is simple. Make sure it isn’t a rat, moles, gophers and other insectivores, or another burrowing animal. We will stick to gophers, moles and rats as they are the most common burrowers on human-owned land aside from skunks.
Rats will burrow under foliage. They prefer semi-open areas rather than under sheds but they will also do that. They tend to make very clean burrows that are tunnels to their nest from the area where they access food. This burrow should be well hidden and hard to find. It should also only be a few inches wide as rats are small. For this reason, if you find a rat burrow it can be assured it’s not skunks.
Moles do not have good or any eye site. They dig in the ground to find grubs and use mostly smell in their pitch-black tunnels. The mole is so blind that it needs to find a hill to dig in. This means it needs to start digging where ever it is and move forward while doing creating what looks like a runway. This is how to tell if a mole is on your property. You will also notice a hole on top of the hilled area, these are molehills and will be surrounded by a lot of dirt. Pocket gophers create a tunnel system that can reach areas of two hundred to two thousand feet square. The gopher or pocket gopher is very different. The burrows they make are about 3 inches round and they make much wider feeding tunnels, up to 6 inches. They then make a storage chamber for food and a nest as much as six feet below the soil. Both these types of burrows, rats, and moles are very different from skunk burrows.
Skunk burrows are usually an open hole surrounded by dead grass. The dead grass is from the skunk digging and ripping up the grassroots. The skunk will leave little to no soil on the outside prefer to push soil around in the burrow. If you find holes like this on your property then you likely have skunks.
