Many a farm boy and his dog had a great time digging out skunks, going under barns and dragging them out, or just trapping them. Many times a farm boy could earn more in a season s trapping than his father made in a year on the farm. Some farmers realized the potential as well. A former milk-hauler from the day of milk cans, told me of one farmer who had caught one hundred skunks during the summer and fall and cared for them in an old hen house. He was going to harvest them that day.
Skunks save some farms during the Depression by the income from their pelts.
Today we have furbearers that were not here in the early days of settlement. The bear has come back, seen often but still protected. The eastern Coyote has moved into all the eastern states, a coyote with wold genes. While the wolf is supposedly gone, the Algonquin wolf of Ontario does crossthe St. Lawerence ice in the winter and does hybridize with the coyote. We now have these by hybrid furbearers everywhere, although they were first seen here in the 1960 s.