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Living on a Sprayer

A striped skunk.

In South Dakota, there are those who trap skunks and those whose hearts have been trapped, by a skunk.

To which group belongs the future? Time will tell, possibly neither.

For now, South Dakota remains a decidedly liberal state as regards legal opportunities to achieve one's skunk-related objectives. The Nest Predator Bounty Program, which began last year, restarts April 1. Skunk tails will fetch a five dollar bounty. South Dakota is also one of fourteen states that allow skunk ownership, though a permit from the Animal Industry Board is required.

Last year, the state distributed thousands of live traps and paid out over half a million dollars for tails collected from raccoons, skunks, opossums, red foxes and badgers.

Skunks were the second-most trapped small mammal, after raccoons.

Proponents of the program hope that it will renew interest in trapping among younger generations.

"That was the original intent of this nest predator bounty program, to get families outdoors and recreating and bringing back that trapping heritage and getting families outside," Game, Fish and Parks Deputy Secretary Kevin Robling told SDPB at the close of last year's program.

There is at least one domesticated skunk breeder in the state (who — while declining to be interviewed — confirmed that domestic skunk owners, other than himself, do exist in South Dakota). Still, skunk enthusiasts are almost undoubtedly smaller in number, and they lack the (relative) Instagram presence of the trappers.

The tail trade offers small bucks, but what attracts certain people to open their homes to a skunk or three?

SkunkFest and skunkhaven.net founder Deborah Cipriani, of Ohio, has done more than most to bring skunk lovers into the light, and says she has offered skunk advice to enthusiasts in every state, and around the world.

"It's just like for people want a cat or a dog or ferrets," Cipriani says. "There's legal breeders of skunks There's all different colors. There's lavender's, apricots, champagne, browns, beautiful gray ones. And we love our skunks and we just don't like to hear that they're going to chop off the tails."

Cipriani says skunk personalities also vary. "They're different just like people. You may have nice skunks. You have skunks that want to cuddle with you. You may have skunks that like one person and not the other, just like people. And they have feelings, just like people."

She says that many of the skunk enthusiasts who call her for advice are domestic skunk owners. ("The big thing with a pet skunk is their diet." Calcium is important.) However, many are not. "There's a lot of skunk lovers out there that don't own pet skunks," says Cipriani, "but they try to help the wild skunks."

Though South Dakotans are free to hunt, or love, skunks, there is no especially vocal, skunk-focused community in our state. The Pierre-based Varmint Hunter Association, publisher of "Varmint Hunter" magazine, was a voice for varmint hunters in general, but shut its doors in 2015. On the flip-side, skunk owners have recently received some national attention, but still maintain a low profile in South Dakota.

Has South Dakota achieved a balance, or is this the calm before the spray? Does the freedom to live out these disparate skunk dreams enable us to live in harmony, or further incline us toward our separate spheres — in which we only interface with caricatures of each other?

Hunter, trapper or lover — this is your forum. Air out your opinions on how our state relates to its skunk population by emailing [email protected].