Skunk Under Your Deck on Long Island? Why You Should Not Seal the Hole Yet, and the 5 Steps That Get It Out (2026)

Maybe. On Long Island, a skunk smell at night does not prove a skunk is living under your deck, and in most of Nassau County it is the less likely explanation. The striped skunk is established in central Suffolk, especially the Pine Barrens around Manorville, and naturalists have tracked it spreading out from there in every direction over the past decade. Reports from Nassau exist but are scattered. So before you plan around a skunk, confirm it.

Three signs together make the case. First, the smell pattern: skunk musk is strongest at dusk and in the hour before dawn, when the animal is leaving and returning, and it fades during the day. A skunk that lives under your deck does not stink all the time; it stinks when something startles it. Second, the entrance: skunks dig, so look along the base of the deck or shed for a single rounded opening about 4 to 6 inches across with loose soil kicked out in a fan. Third, the lawn: skunks hunt grubs and beetle larvae at night and leave small cone shaped holes, an inch or two deep, scattered across the grass, often many in one night.

Two smell alikes fool Long Island homeowners every fall. Red fox urine has a sharp skunky edge and foxes are far more common across Nassau than skunks are, so a skunk smell in the yard with no digging and no burrow is often a fox marking its route. The second one matters for safety: natural gas is odorized with a sulfur compound that many people describe as skunk. If you smell skunk inside the house, especially near the kitchen, basement or a gas appliance, and there is no animal anywhere, call your gas utility's emergency line before you call us.

If you have the dusk and dawn smell, the burrow and the lawn holes, you have a skunk. Our skunk removal page covers the service itself; the rest of this guide covers what to do and what not to do.

A skunk picked your deck because it is dry, dark, undisturbed and sits on top of a food supply. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation describes residential areas with lawns and large nut and acorn producing shade trees as optimal skunk habitat, and it notes that in fall skunks look for shelter in exactly the kind of spaces a deck provides: damaged foundations and the crawl space under a porch. A lawn with a grub problem is a buffet, and a deck with a gap in the lattice is the bedroom next to it.

Timing tells you what kind of den you have. From late September through November a skunk is looking for a winter den. Skunks do not truly hibernate, but they retreat to a den and stay inactive for long stretches once it gets cold, with males moving around on warmer nights and everyone active again for breeding in February and early March. Births follow in May, and DEC notes that families are commonly seen out together in early July. So a skunk that moves in during fall may be under your deck until spring, and a skunk that shows up in May is a mother who will not leave her kits for roughly two months.

Will it leave on its own? Eventually, but on its schedule, not yours. A fall den is often occupied until March. A nursing den empties out by mid July when the kits are old enough to travel. A skunk that is only passing through to eat your grubs comes and goes nightly and may not be living there at all. The problem with waiting is what happens in the meantime: the musk, the digging, a dog that finds it before you do, and the risk that a second animal discovers the same gap.

No. Sealing the opening while the skunk is inside is the single most expensive mistake we see, and the repellent shortcuts are both illegal and ineffective.

Here is what happens when you block the hole with a skunk still under there. Skunks are strong diggers. A shut in skunk tears a new opening, usually in a spot you cannot see or reach, and now you have two holes. If it cannot get out, it dies under your deck, and a dead skunk under a deck produces an odor that outlasts anything the living animal did, for weeks, with no way to remove the body short of pulling up boards. If it is a mother with kits in May or June, you have sealed in a litter that will die there. Every one of those outcomes costs more than doing it in the right order.

Now the shortcuts. Mothballs are pesticides regulated by the EPA. Their labels allow use only in sealed containers against fabric pests, and using them outdoors, under a deck, or to repel any animal is a violation of the label, which makes it illegal under federal pesticide law. They also do not work on a denned skunk, and the naphthalene vapor drifts into the house above the deck. Ammonia soaked rags are the other internet favorite; a skunk that has already committed to a den will put up with a lot of smell, and ammonia is gone with the first rain. Bright lights and a radio under the deck sometimes nudge a skunk that was only testing the spot, but they do nothing for a mother with kits or a skunk settled in for winter.

The order that works is the one every licensed operator uses: get the animal out, confirm the den is empty, then seal. Never the other way around.

The spray is the nuisance. Rabies and your dog are the real risks. A striped skunk can aim its spray accurately at a target up to about 15 feet away, and the oily musk clings to fur, decking and siding for days. Unpleasant, but not dangerous. The two things that can actually hurt your household are a sick skunk and a curious pet.

Rabies on Long Island is no longer a theoretical concern. Nassau County declared rabies an imminent public health threat on July 22, 2025 after confirming 25 cases in raccoons and feral cats since June 2024, the first cases in the county since it was declared eradicated in 2016. Suffolk confirmed six rabid raccoons in 2025, all in the Amityville area, its first since 2009. DEC's own skunk profile notes that as raccoon rabies spread across southern New York, skunks were the most commonly confirmed rabies species after raccoons. A skunk out in daylight, stumbling, circling, or unusually bold toward people or pets should be reported to your county health department, not approached.

Your dog is the other problem. DEC points out that most fall skunk odor complaints trace back to two things: home maintenance gaps that let skunks den, and dogs roaming the yard at night. A dog that corners a skunk under the deck gets sprayed in the face, and if the skunk is sick the dog has had a direct exposure. Keep dogs leashed or inside after dark while a skunk is on the property, do not leave cat food outside at night (DEC notes cats will share it with skunks), and keep rabies vaccinations current. Small children should stay off the deck and away from the burrow until the animal is gone.

Legally, a homeowner may take a skunk that is a nuisance on their own property, but the rules around that make a do it yourself trap a bad idea for almost everyone. New York State DEC lists skunk as a species a property owner may take whether it is merely a nuisance or actively damaging property. DEC defines nuisance broadly: an animal that may cause damage, is perceived as a threat to health or safety, or is persistent and perceived as an annoyance. A skunk denning under your deck qualifies.

Then come the conditions. First, it is illegal to move or relocate the animal off your property. DEC's language is direct: you cannot live trap an animal and release it in a park, on state land, or anywhere other than the property where it was caught. The woods behind the high school and the preserve down the road are both off limits. Second, if you take a skunk outside the open hunting and trapping season, DEC requires that the animal be buried or cremated immediately. That means your choices after trapping a skunk yourself are to release it right back into your own yard, which solves nothing, or to put it down humanely and dispose of it on your property the same day, which almost no homeowner is equipped or willing to do. Transporting a live skunk anywhere requires a Nuisance Wildlife Control Operator license.

There is also the practical side. Skunks in a box trap rarely spray, but a homeowner walking up to an open wire cage with a skunk in it, with no cover, in daylight, is the scenario where it happens. The licensed route exists for a reason. A written agreement with a licensed operator lets that person legally trap, transport and handle the skunk, and the handling is the part that keeps you from smelling like one for a week.

Here is the process we use on Long Island skunk jobs. It is the same order whether the skunk is under a deck, a shed, a porch or a backyard studio.

1. Confirm the animal and map the openings. We walk the full perimeter of the structure, not just the hole you found, and look for secondary openings, fresh digging and tracks. A skunk track shows five toes with visible claw marks. We also check the lawn for cone shaped grub digging, which tells us the skunk is feeding on your property and not just sleeping there.
2. Check the calendar for kits. From May into early July we assume a den may hold young until we prove otherwise. Kits cannot be trapped the way an adult can and sealing them in is the outcome we are trying to prevent, so the plan changes if we find a nursing den.
3. Set the trap at the entrance. A box trap goes directly at the burrow mouth so the skunk walks into it on its normal route out at dusk. We cover the trap so a caught skunk is in the dark and calm, which is exactly why box trapped skunks almost never spray.
4. Remove the animal under cover. The covered trap is carried out without jostling and the skunk is handled by a licensed operator, which is what New York law requires for transport.
5. Confirm empty, then close it with metal. Only after we are sure nothing is still under there do we cover the den opening with galvanized wire mesh anchored into the ground. If you want the entire deck skirted so nothing moves in next fall, we will show you exactly where and how: half inch hardware cloth run down 12 inches below grade and bent outward 12 inches in an L shape, which stops a digging animal because skunks cannot burrow straight down through it.

For a skunk that is only feeding in the yard and not denning under anything, we run a 10 day exterior trapping program instead of the nesting removal.

Most denning skunks are out within a few nights of the trap going in, because a skunk that lives under your deck leaves through that opening every evening. The 10 day exterior program for a yard skunk runs the full 10 days because a feeding skunk is not on a fixed route. Sealing happens the day we confirm the den is empty.

Price is set by three things, and we quote it in writing before anyone comes out: where the skunk is denning and how hard the opening is to reach, how many openings need to be closed, and whether young are present, which changes the timeline and the handling. Most jobs are quoted over the phone. Larger ones get a free on site look first. Nesting removal, meaning a skunk living under a structure, carries our 6 month written guarantee on that opening. The exterior trapping program has no guarantee, because we cannot promise which animals walk through your yard after we leave.

One thing we will tell you up front that other companies sometimes do not: if your lawn has a grub problem, the skunk is there for dinner, and the next skunk or raccoon will find the same dinner. Treating the lawn is a separate conversation, but ignoring it is why some homes have a wildlife problem every single fall.

Peroxide, baking soda and dish soap, mixed fresh and used immediately. Tomato juice masks the smell for an hour and does nothing to the chemistry. The formula that actually works was developed by chemist Paul Krebaum and is the one university extension wildlife programs recommend: 1 quart of fresh 3 percent hydrogen peroxide, a quarter cup of baking soda, and 1 to 2 teaspoons of liquid dish soap. The peroxide and baking soda oxidize the sulfur compounds (thiols) in skunk musk into odorless compounds, and the soap breaks down the oil so the other two can reach it.

Three rules for using it. Mix it in an open bucket and never store it in a closed bottle, because the reaction produces oxygen and a sealed container can burst. Use it right away, since the mixture loses strength within minutes and old peroxide has already turned to water. Keep it out of eyes, and expect it to lighten dark fur or fabric slightly. On a dog, work it into the sprayed area, leave it a few minutes, then rinse thoroughly. On a wood deck, siding or stone walkway, apply it, let it sit, and rinse. For clothing, hot wash with a half cup of baking soda added to the detergent. Commercial skunk odor removers based on the same neutralizing chemistry are fine; products that only mask the odor with a minty scent are not a fix.

For the smell under the deck itself, the odor fades once the skunk is gone and the area has aired out. A smell that gets worse after the hole is closed, rather than better, usually means something died under there, and that is a call to make the same day.