Skinned and cut up a deer today.
My skinning article is here,
http://www.braintan.com/articles/Billyskins/billyskins1.htm
That looks fantastic. Thanks a lot. Could the same method (pulling rather than cutting off) be used for other animals hides?
It works fine for quite a few animals but not all. Animals like deer, goats, antelope, sheep, elk, rabbits, and many other smaller animals can be pulled.
Others like beaver and otter don’t pull worth a darn and you have to cut every inch of the skin off.
Just have to try and see.
what about possum & raccoons? they’ve been on my mind a bit lately, and i’ve been wondering about how to skin & process them. any exp?
coool. thanks for the tips on how to make the hide more symmetrical by cutting after you peel.
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If you want to see how to skin a deer how victor shows you could contribute to my capitalistic karma and buy my DVD which shows the whole skinning process start to finish, as well as how to braintan that skin…
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plug away. and plug us a link while you’re at it. 
I don’t know about possum or racoons. No possum here and very few coons.
thanks for sharing your article–great photos. i expect i’ll find a small critter before any deer come into my life, but i feel more confident and prepared after seeing that and thinking it through.
i took in your comments about apprenticing with a meat cutter. useful skills, but i would hope to find one with heart.
i wonder what other bits you’ve learned about making use of ALL of the animal. i’d like to hear about organs, suet, eyeballs, hooves, bones, feathers, whatnot. . . i make a fair bit of stock, but what else can happen?
also, the examples you gave of animals you can’t “pull”–otter, beaver–swimmers? more fat under the skin? or are they just smaller?
Can’t pull a coon skin off, far to much fat between the skin and the meat, you have to use a knife almost all the way, which ends up taking a while if you really want to save all the fat for rendering. The fattiness is the element that dictates whether you can pull or not. Cat is fairly easy to pull as well.
Yeah Lonnie is right about the fattiness. It also seems to have something to do with the kind of fat too. Yes cats pull pretty good. I’ve had pretty good success pulling cougar and bobcat skins, using the knife only here and there till I get to the feet and head.
I never did have good luck pulling coyote skins though. Most of the coyotes I’ve skinned had been frozen solid before I could thaw them and skin them. Maybe that made them more difficult.
Here, if the game wardens have to kill an animal that’s getting into trouble, and there is any reasonable $ value to the skin, they get them skinned and salted, then they store them in a warehouse where they have an annual auction. I used to be the guy that did the skinning around here, so I’ve skinned a lot of different animals.
Yarrow dreamer, apologies for not replying to your question, somehow I just spaced it out I guess.
With deer this is what I do most of the time.
Of course I eat the meat, I cut open the bones and cook them to make marrow broth. Can that in quart jars and use it for soup stock.
We also eat liver, kidneys, heart, tongue.
I save brains for tanning hides.
I save backstrap sinew for thread.
I save hooves which I sell.
Whitetail deer tails I sell to a guy who makes fishing flies and lures.
Antlers I use for various craft projects but I have amassed waaaay too many now so I’m probably gonna look for someone to sell them to.
Hides I tan or rawhide and sell.
I work for a meat cutter in the fall skinning and hauling his “waste”
I collect all the heads and take the brains for tanning and the antlers.
I also take home hundreds of lower legs and prepare the hooves which I sell.
And I get all the hides, which I tan and sell for my living.
Plus he pays me in cash and bags of various kinds of sausage, pepperoni, smokies, etc. I’m his taste tester when he tries a new recipe. He only works with wild meat so it’s all good stuff.
The hard tallow deer fat I hang up in a basket between two trees for the birds in the winter. All the birds that stay here for the winter come for it. They really like it and I have lots of that from fleshing hides. They also use the hair for nest building in the spring.
I compost the hair.
I’ve made some tools with the lower leg bones but mostly I put them out for the coyotes or burn them. The reason I burn them is that my place is already a magnet for all the carnivores and I don’t need to be any more of a lure than I already am. I live in bobcat, cougar and bear country. In the last twenty years we have had a good relationship. A few things to work out and a couple of face to face experiences but I’ve never killed one of them. I try to keep things good between us.
"Thanks, heyvictor, and also for the deer info. i wonder what they do with the hooves–glue? "
Yarrow Dreamer, I’ll answer your question about the hooves here just to keep it in context.
The hooves I sell are used for ceremonial regalia. Some are attached to clothing and some are attached to handles so they rattle. The guy who buys mine is on Vancouver Island. This is an old traditional “rattle”, commonly used here in the NW and western Canada. From time to time hooves have to be replaced so people are always looking for them.
I just received a gift of 15 lbs of venison in various cuts. In my search for ways to cook it, I came across this website and I thought it looked interesting.
BlueHeron,
How have you been enjoying your deer meat?
Good! I learned a lot of tips and tricks from the research I was doing.
One of my favorite ways to prepare it (so far) is to soak a venison steak in salt water for a while to extract the blood and some of the gamey taste. Then I make a French dressing marinade (more vinegar than the salad dressing recipe calls for) and add lots of herbs (sage, bay leaves, rosemary, etc) and some Worcestershire sauce.
I marinate it overnight and cook it on the stovetop. I thought it was particularly good with brussels sprouts (after spinach, my favorite vegetable).
One week till deer hunting season starts here for me. It goes till Dec. 10. this is when I not only get my meat for the year but I also collect 150 - 200 hides, all the brains I’ll need for the year, legs, antlers, bones plus a bit of cash from work I do for the meat cutter. For the next three months one of my main focuses will be DEER.
Went deer hunting with one of my friends today. He’s 76 years old I think. We sat in one spot and waited for almost three hours this afternoon. During that time we watched about 15 deer. There were two bucks that we saw almost right from the start. They stayed just out of range and kept trees and bushes between us and them. To be legal we have to shoot bucks here. One of them bedded down for about a half hour. So we waited. Just before dark another buck showed up. He hung back and let three or four does go ahead of him. Finally with about ten minutes of shooting light left he came out and was within my range and we were able to bring him home with us.
My old friend has already gotten two for himself and his family so this one is for my family. He didn’t bring his rifle, he just came along to watch.
I’m working with teens at an alternate school. There’s one young man that really wants to learn to hunt. He’s 14. He’s been coming over and helping me skin and butcher this fall. We skinned and did the rough cutting on the most recent deer I shot today. He helped me with the last one too.
Here he is practicing separating the leg joints using a knife instead of a saw.
Monday I’m bringing in a whole hind quarter to school. I’ll show the students how to cut it up. We’re going to weigh it before and after so we can see how much actual meat you get compared to bones and scrap. Then we’ll make stew meat and grinder meat and we’ll take the big pieces and slice them thin for jerky. We’ll weigh the jerky meat before and after drying so we can see how much weight is lost in the drying process. Should be fun.
I’ll bring the grinder in so they can grind meat too.
That’s bad ass! I wish I could be there for your class!
True rewilding in action ;D