I’ll be sure to let you know if I run into a living breathing skunk.

By ‘tapped out’ are you referring to something like this from the Handbook for Scoutmasters (New York: BSA, 1925):

Detail a Patrol Leader to go to the ante-room and get the candidate.
Patrol Leader knocks at door.
Senior Patrol Leader: “Who goes there?”
Patrol leader: “Scout of troop___.”
S.P.L.: “What is your desire?”
P.L.: “To be admitted with the candidate…”
Scoutmaster: “Permit them to enter.”

Was this type of thing changed where you were to being ‘called out’? Or am I on a completely wrong track?

I can find no other reference on Google to “Order of the Skunk Skull” besides this post. If you find anything else (Like a living breathing member) I’d love to know how the ritual/organization lives and acts today. (OA is primarily a service organization)

Order of the Arrow began at a summer camp, I think.

About 20 years ago in the Logan area, a lot of the stake presidents and even area authorities objected to a new ritual that somebody in the scouts had introduced at the summer camp. He had begun initiating boys into a society where they were know by a new name and did secret handshakes. I never saw any of it myself, but I know many of the SPs were freaked out.

I wish there were a full treatment somewhere of this kind of scouting, inside or outside the church. I don’t think there is much at all published on it though. Anyone?

My cousin brought the passage in Kimball’s monograph to my attention. The date of the YMMIA handbook in question is 1925. Kimball has the exact references. As far as I know, he is on the history faculty at BYU, so you might contact him for more reading suggestions.

Presumably, to warrant discussion in the YMMIA handbook this kind of scouting would have been fairly common in the church early on. If kept, records of local groups like the skunks would be difficult to find, I imagine. A lot of the information to be had would probably be in the form of interviews with scouts.

The other current group I’ve heard of that does stuff like this is the Order of the Arrow, founded in 1915. But it’s much, much larger and not of Mormon pedigree, though many LDS scouts belong to it. There is an informative and respectably documented article on Wikipedia which shows that the YMMIA handbook was part of a broader discourse, though the temple adds a unique component to Mormon concerns with this type of scouting.