The striped skunk turns up in 1,188 Ohio records across 70 counties, led by Cuyahoga, Summit, and Franklin. It is one of the state’s most recognizable mammals, though far more often smelled, or met on a road at night, than watched at leisure.
A night-shift forager
Skunks work after dark, shuffling along field edges, lawns, and creek bottoms and digging small conical holes wherever they smell grubs. Insects, beetle larvae especially, make up much of the diet, with mice, eggs, berries, and carrion filling it out, and that famous spray means a skunk can afford to take its time. It dens in ground burrows, hollow logs, and under porches and sheds, so it lives comfortably alongside people. Ohio’s records run from Killdeer Plains and Big Island wildlife areas and The Wilds in the farm country to Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Wayne National Forest, and the marsh edges along Lake Erie.
Summer highs, winter quiet
Reports climb steeply into June and stay high through August, when insect prey is most abundant and the year’s young, born in May, have left the den to trail their mother on her nightly rounds. Skunks do not truly hibernate, but in midwinter they den up, sometimes several females together, and stay underground through cold snaps, so December and January counts fall to a small fraction of summer’s.
Status in Ohio
The striped skunk is native to Ohio and not listed as nonindigenous by USGS NAS. NatureServe ranks it SNR, unranked, in the state; globally it is G5, Secure, and the IUCN lists it as Least Concern.
Full species profile
