Skunk removal

Skunks rarely get into the house. They get under it, or under the deck, the shed, the porch or the front steps, and you find out because of the smell, because the lawn is dotted with small conical holes, or because the dog has had a very bad evening. They are also the animal homeowners most want to handle themselves and should not.

Understand what they are after. A denning skunk wants a dark, dry cavity with a single defensible entrance, which is exactly what an open-sided deck provides. The grubs they dig for in your lawn are a separate issue and one of the more useful things a skunk does. Dens are used most intensively from late winter, when mating happens, through the spring when kits are born, and a den with young must not be sealed.

Step one: inspection and identifying the den. The technician looks for the entry hole, the worn trail, the tracks and the hair caught on the edge of the opening. A light dusting of flour or sand across the entry, checked the next morning, confirms whether it is active and whether more than one animal is using it. Skunks often share space with groundhogs under the same deck, so it is worth knowing what is actually down there.

Step two: timing and young. Kits are typically born in spring and stay in the den for several weeks. Ontario's advice is to time removal for when young have left the den or nest, to avoid separating a mother from her young (Ontario, preventing and managing conflicts with small animals). Where a den with kits cannot wait, hand removal and a reunion box outside the entry is the humane approach, and it is not work for an untrained person, for obvious reasons.

Step three: the one-way door. A one-way door sized for a skunk is fitted over the entry. The animal leaves to forage and cannot return. Skunks are poor climbers, so the design differs from a raccoon door, and it has to sit tight to the ground because a skunk will simply dig beside a gap.

Step four: the buried screen, which is the actual fix. This is the part that matters and the part that is most often skipped. Galvanized mesh is installed around the perimeter of the deck or shed and buried, then turned outward in an L shape at the bottom so an animal digging at the edge meets mesh rather than soil. Without the outward return, a skunk or a groundhog digs under it within a season.

Step five: remove the attraction. Grubs in the lawn, fallen fruit, pet food left outside, open compost and accessible garbage. Ontario's guidance also mentions laying mesh over lawn areas as a deterrent to digging. Skunks go where the food is, and a perfectly screened deck simply moves them next door if the yard is still a buffet.

How long it takes. Inspection is under an hour. A one-way door stays on three to seven days. Perimeter screening of a typical deck is one day, sometimes two if there is hardscaping or a concrete pad to work around. Spring jobs with kits take longer because the timing is dictated by the animals.

What it costs in Ottawa in 2026. Indicative ranges only, and note that this site's price guide does not yet carry a skunk row, so treat these as planning figures. An inspection is commonly $100 to $250 and often credited to the job. A one-way door with a small entry repair is generally $300 to $700. Full perimeter screening of a deck or shed, which is the durable solution, commonly runs $700 to $2,500 depending on the linear metres and how hard the ground is to dig. Removal of kits adds a few hundred. Deodorizing under a structure, where spraying has happened, is usually a separate charge.

What the law says. A property owner or their agent may capture wildlife damaging property under Ontario's rules, and live-captured animals must be released within 1 kilometre of where they were captured and within 24 hours (Ontario, harass, capture or kill a wild animal damaging private property). For a skunk, a one-kilometre release is effectively a release into the same neighbourhood, which is the plainest possible argument for screening the structure rather than trapping repeatedly.

What makes an Ottawa house different. Rabies awareness matters here: eastern Ontario is identified as high risk for the reintroduction of raccoon variant rabies from neighbouring jurisdictions, and skunks are a species that carries strains of the virus, so any bite or direct contact means a call to your doctor or veterinarian and to Ottawa Public Health (Ontario, wildlife rabies surveillance and control). Structurally, the open-sided pressure-treated decks that went onto tens of thousands of Ottawa suburban houses from the 1980s onward are close to ideal skunk habitat. Frost is the practical complication: burying screen means digging, and the ground here is frozen hard from roughly December to late March, so perimeter work is a spring to autumn job.

What to ask before you hire. Have you confirmed whether there are young. Are you installing a buried screen with an outward return, and how deep. What mesh gauge. Will you also screen the shed and the porch, or only the deck. What happens if something digs back in, and what is the warranty. Will you deodorize underneath. And plainly: what is your plan for not getting sprayed, because a contractor who has not thought about that has not done many of these.