When I was a teenager, I trapped one on a rabbit set. I pulled the trap out of a hole and then I got a big surprise. Skunk!! I shot it in the neck with my air rifle and ran away. He was dead a few minutes later when I returned to no smell in the air. I could really smell it after I started skinning. When you're that close the smell can actually make your eyes burn. I think it's almost noxious.
I stretched the hide and salted it in our
unfinished basement right under my parents bedroom. My Dad could smell it every time he went down there but chalked it up to a
fabricated story of mine about a skunk visiting our garbage cans outside the basement. Finally one day he found it and once again I
fabricated a story citing his own words that he wanted a skunk-skin hat someday. That was something he mentioned once in passing years before this date. I got pretty lucky and he has it still. We soaked it in tomato juice to get rid of the smell and he has kept it on his bookshelf next to the bed for years now. I think the fabricated story worked-out in more than one way. He holds that hide in high-esteem, I was his junior trapper.
Back then, some 15+ years ago, we tanned it with Oxalic acid.
Nowadays I think I would wear latex gloves, and stick a clothespin on my nose.
BTW, a bit of almost completely useless info, skunks can't spray if their hind legs are off the ground.
Good luck with Pepe 'le Poo.
~Dinny
