Distribution
Common throughout the state. Rural areas with rolling hills or bluffs and a mixture of farmland, timber and pastureland tend to support the highest numbers. Also abundant in some suburban areas, especially those near railroads or rights-of-way for high-tension power lines because these features often provide travel-ways and denning sites.
Search engines can provide you with track patterns.
Habitat
Striped skunks use a wide variety of habitats, but prefer forest borders, brushy areas, and open, grassy fields broken by wooded ravines and rock formations. A permanent source of water adds to the attractiveness of a site.
Habits
Skunks can dig their own dens, but prefer to use those excavated by woodchucks, badgers or other animals. Den sites also include stumps, caves, rock piles, old buildings, junk piles, sheds, wood piles, and dry drainage tiles or storm sewers.
Skunks are most active at night. They live in an area 1 to 1.5 miles in diameter, but use only a small part of this on any given night.
Skunks are slow-moving and docile. Their senses of sight, smell and hearing are poor compared to most predators. Their strong-smelling musk is their best defense. Before discharging it, they usually face their intruder, arch their backs, raise their tails and stamp the ground with their front feet.
Foods
Insects are their preferred food and make up most of their diet in the spring and summer. Other common foods include mice, young rabbits, birds and their eggs, corn, fruit and berries.
Reproduction
Breeding begins in February and lasts through March. A single litter of 4 to 10 young is born from early May to early June.
Diseases
Skunks are susceptible to diseases like rabies, canine distemper and leptospirosis. Until recently, their numbers went through boom and bust cycles linked to rabies outbreaks. The last epidemic occurred in the early 1980s. Their numbers have remained low but stable since that time.
Conservation
Little habitat management occurs specifically for striped skunks. However, they benefit from practices aimed at improving conditions for other wildlife like government programs that pay farmers to plant grasses and other permanent cover in crop fields that have problems with soil erosion or are located along waterways.