Favorite skinning methods

[John Y Cannuck]

Tried something new a couple of weeks back, when I got a call from the local police about a deer they shot inside a local buisness.
(long story)

I skinned the deer, before I gutted it!

I took the deer home, and hung it in my garage. I have a set up with an old boat winch rigged through a trap door that works dandy.
It was the cleanest skinning job I've ever done!
With no blood to sticky things up, the hide came off clean as a whistle.
I then gutted the deer hanging. Just put a washtub under it, and openned the deer from throat to ... well, you know. trimmed the diaphram, Plop in the double garbage bag lined tub. Slick.

Hose down the floor for splatters, done!

Now obviously, it isn't reasonable in the bush, but, where possible, I'll do it again.

[BloomGrad]

I hunt close to the cabin and have done a few does like you describe.  My sis has done some goats for her dog's meals.  She is very strict on a raw feed diet for her dogs.  No canned or bagged preservatives for her Rotties.

When I went several times to ALABAMA to hunt this is the method all the guides used.  They didn't want us touching the deer.  Something about live weight measurements needed for the Biologists records.

I have never decided which is best, Neck Up or Neck Down.  I've done both.  Mostly neck down.

I guess I'll have to get a couple more deer befor I decide.

[John Y Cannuck]

The ATV method of skinning, for those that have yet to try it, is about as fast a method as you could ask for.
Make all the usual cuts, down the gut, out, and around the legs, and around the head.
skin back a few inches behind the head, enough to cover a smooth stone, or golf ball.
Tie a rope around the covered stone, and hook the other end of the rope to your ATV, or vehicle.
Tie the head to a tree, with the deer lying on a clean tarp.
drive away slowly.
The hide may need a bit of help getting over the shoulders, but, especially if still warm, it usually just pulls off clean as can be.
I did one by tieing the head off inside my trailer, lined with a clean tarp, and driving the trailer ahead. All I had left to do was take the head off, and straight to the butcher, without even unloading.

[John Y Cannuck]

One incident I should report, is that when we tried the above with a calf moose, the hide got stuck, and, as we were using a tractor, and an army truck to pull, the guy driving just gave it a bit more....
The head popped clean off, and we had a flying moose for a couple of seconds.

[Mike Bare]

 I am lucky to have a place to hunt that allows me to get the deer to the skinning pole pretty fast. This allows me to get the deer to the pole and skin it before gutting it. I have been doing it this way for about 20 years.....In my opinion, this is the best way to treat a deer. The resulting carcass is much cleaner and very seldom do I find a hair on any meat! I don't eat venison that has been processed by anyone other than my hunting partners, for this is the way we all process our deer. BTW....We always hang them by the back legs and skin them back to front.

[John Y Cannuck]

Skinning from back to front, has the advantage of not having that hair generating head above the meat.
Of course if you take the head off before skinning, you can hang it from either end with equal results.

[wncchester]

An old mountain man showed me how to pull the skin off with my truck back around '75.  Never did another one butt up!  Pulling from the rear tends to peel off meat that the other way leaves in place.   It seems there are a few precautions to insure it works tho.

1.  Make sure the neck rope and its anchor are sufficently strong.  Getting half done when the rope snaps or the suspension limb breaks puts the deer on the ground with much exposed meat!  It may take a few trys to learn how to secure the rock in the neck skin and tie the pulling rope to it but it can be done.  I use 1/2" nylon both for securing/hanging and pulling

2.  Hack-sawing the legs off at the knees helps release the hide.  And cut the belly skin from the hanging rope to the butt, then slit the front leg skin in such a way as to help it pull free easily.  Try this once and you will see where the hard to release place is, slit it there.

3.  Even if it's done dry you shouldn't get much hair fall but even that can be reduced by wetting the head first.

4.  Secure the deer on a limb or in your trailer(!) and attach the pull rope to the front of your tow vehicle.  Pull back slowly and watch the neck and anchor points.  If either shows a problem, stop and fix it before going further.

5.  Once the skin is removed I simply cut off the quarters, loins and neck roast.  A sharp fish fillet knife handles all cuts but the hip joint and a Buck 110 pocket knife does that.  This method leaves the entire carcass in a clean and compact mass that's easy to dispose of, guts and all, with very little useable meat loss.

Dressing deer this way has reduced my total handling time to less than a quarter of what the more conventional method took and I have much less hair contamination.  Normal field dressing, hanging butt-up and cutting the hide away while pulling it by hand, cleaning the body cavity of gut juice, etc., and then gathering all the mess for proper disposal was difficult to do alone and took a lot of time.  I now have seven easy to handle pieces to dispose of; the hide, the carcass - with guts still in place -, the legs and head.   By myself, I often have my meat out of the woods and in a cooler with the rest ready for the dump within a couple of hours of the kill.

[John Y Cannuck]

While I still take my meat to the buthcer for final processing, I have skinned deer in my trailer.
I tied off the hide to a backhoe at my shop, put a clean tarp underneath, and tied the head to the hitch. Drove ahead at an idle, and striaght to the butcher, after I doffed the head.

[FW Conch]

wncchester, some of those "old mountain men" were well worth listening to,huh? BTW,head up Jim

[wncchester]

FW, that one sure was. 

Understand he first did it that way with a mule but a truck is easer to find these days!  Quick, neat and clean. 

A lot of good sense is passing away because youngsters are unwilling to conceed that they don't "know it all."  It would be good for a lot of them to go out and get rich quick, before they forget it!   

[charles p]

I always skin my deer first, suspended from a wench.  I use a gut hook and make two slits.  The first is down the belly to the neck and the second is made down the back side of the deer.  Cut the tail off then start the back slit there.  This makes the deer 10X easier to skin because you are only skinning one side at a time and not running around the deer in circles.

Once the deer is skinned I remove the head.  Before opening the belly, I find the top of the sternum and make a very shallow cut there.  Using long handle pruning shears (loppers), I insert one blade into the slit and chop the ribs all the way to the neck.  This allows me to open the deer at the crotch and make a slit to the beginning of the sternum cut.  Then as I free the insides, it all settles down and rolls out of the open ribs.  The guts, hide, head, etc are all collected in a deep wheelbarrow below the deer.

No hair, no mess, and sometimes no blood on me beyond my wrist.  I rense the deer with a garden hose to chill it down, then hang it in our walk-in cooler (beer truck body).  I cut it up after 24 hours or let it age two weeks.