970 Life-histories of Northern Animals 



them visit his camp by night, but the great pine forest is almost 

 skunkless. 



HOME- The home-range of each individual is doubtless very 



RANGE 11 T-l > 1 1 ,- ,-^ 



small. 1 he creature s powers and mode of life preclude the 

 possibility of its roaming far afield. I have often followed its 

 tracks in the early or late snow, from the den through many 

 places and adventures in quest of food, then back to the den, to 

 learn that at no time did it go more than two or three hundred 

 yards from home. In warm weather, because more active, it 

 may go farther, but this is doubtful, because food is more 

 plentiful then and it is still less forced to travel. I believe a 

 half-mile radius would reach the Ultima Thule of its ordinary 

 wanderings. 



ABUN- In the dry part of the pond and poplar belt of Manitoba, 



it would be safe to estimate the Skunk at i to every square 

 mile. In the prairie region, it is probably a fifth as numerous, 

 and in the pine forest the number may be again divided by 5. 

 This would give us a Skunk population of some 20,000. To 

 approach the problem from another side, the Hudson's Bay 

 Company exports about 10,000 Skunk skins each year. 

 Judged by area, about half must be of this species, and one- 

 tenth of these, again, come from Manitoba, but the free traders 

 get as many as the Company, and half at least of those killed 

 are destroyed by farmers who do not skin them. So that 

 2,000 each year is not too high an estimate of those killed in 

 Manitoba by man alone, besides which are many enemies that 

 will surely double the casualty list. The average number of 

 young seen with the mother in the fall is 2 or not more than 3; 

 the litter at birth is double as many. This shows that the 

 destruction of the very young by Coyotes, Foxes, Badgers, 

 owls, eagles, etc., is very high, and also that, since winter 

 hardships are still ahead, the Skunks cannot double their 

 number in a year; 50 per cent, drain is all I believe the species 

 can stand in the most favourable food localities. But the 

 Skunks in Manitoba are far from decreasing under the esti- 



