"In regard to the habits of skunk in the Elkhorn River District, Nebraska, will say they usually den in old badger holes, cleaning them out in the fall, sometimes making a cavity in them 2x3 feet by 18 inches high, preferring hilltops, bluffs and slough banks as situations. Sometimes they dig dens themselves, seldom going over 1 foot below the surface. The cavity is bedded 6 inches deep and the hole about half filled with dry grass."--Nebraskan.
"Farm readers, please don't kill the skunk during the summer when his hide is worthless, because he got a chicken or two, but wait and take his hide in the winter. It will more than pay for the chicken if you really must rid your back woods of him, why not take him with box traps and start a fur farm?"--Peerless Bum.
"John M. McCrary asks if we have ever heard a skunk make a noise. I can answer that by saying positively yes. I have two male skunks together in a pen and we have been awakened every night about 10 o'clock by their hideous squeals. They seem to be very congenial during the daytime," says Harold Pugh.
Probably the sound you think so hideous is sweet music to the skunks. However, it may be their war cry. If you would watch them and study their habits, especially at night, you might make some valuable contributions to our knowledge of skunk habits.
"Why don't all of you fellows start a fur farm? It will be the most paying business in the country pretty soon."--Albert C. Hancock.
"The natural habits of the skunk is to live in holes in the ground, rocks, trees, stumps, etc. Their food consists of mice, birds, bugs, crickets, grasshoppers, bees, wasps, yellow jackets, angle worms, seeds, berries, ground roots and barks."--Bureau of Agriculture.
Beyond all doubt the skunk has been given more consideration by raisers of fur-bearers than any other animal, with the exception of the fox. There are many who have tried raising these animals with more or less success and where the experimenters have used good judgment and have given the subject all of the attention it deserves, they have been reasonably successful. Most of these people have started in on a small scale, having perhaps only a dozen or two of skunks to start with; in fact nowhere has the business been carried on as extensively as some newspaper articles would lead one to believe; the majority of these parties having at the most only two or three hundred animals.