Me Skinning!

I finally have a few pictures of me skinning a critter and not just skinned critters.  Gregg took the pictures.  Lynx are a lot tougher to skin than foxes.  The way their body is shaped just makes it more complicated, or at least it did for me.  I didn't do too bad except for getting a bit tired at the end and nicking a few tiny holes in the ears and paws.  As always, I started at the back feet.  I skinned around the "ankles" and then cut the paws off the body (this makes it easier to skin out the feet, and you want the feet because lynx have such neat claws.)  Gregg has a super neat contraption used for hanging the critters up.  It's a bar with two hooks on the ends.  It's adjustable and everything.  It was a girl lynx so I didn't have to chop off any balls.  We caught it in a foot trap, so it was still warm when I was skinning it.  I was able to pull a lot of the hide off and didn't have to skin it as much.  Gregg said I have a much lighter touch with the blade than he does.  I guess I'm always scared of cutting stuff up or making holes.  I skinned the back legs up the back of the legs to a point under the tail.  I used Gregg's fancy tail tools to pull the tail bone out and then split the tail.

I wish this wasn't blurry.  It would have been a neat picture.

After hanging the critter up by it's ankles, I skinned around the "wrists" and then cut the front paws off.  I skinned the front legs up close to the body and then pulled down the hide from the butt to where the front legs go into the body.  The front legs were kind of tricky for me.  Gregg had to help and hold them apart.  And help me pull the hide back when I was trying to skin around them enough to pull them through the leg holes.  But I persevered and got the front legs done. 

I got blood on the sleeve of my shirt

The head was super messy.  Because the cat was hanging and still warm, the blood flowed down to the head.  So when I was skinning out the eyes and ears and lips, I was getting blood all over my hands.  There are veins or arteries near those organs that you just end up cutting.  I managed to get the eyelids, ears and lips though.  The after getting the hide off the carcass, I took a razor blade and skinned the ears out and cleaned up around the cartilage.  I was pretty punchy and tired when I was done with the head.  I tried to skin the lips but just couldn't get my head around it.  Gregg helped with the feet.  I skinned 1 and he skinned three.  But to be fair, I was working on the ears and stuff when he was skinning the feet.  It was a long day but totally worth it.  I was soooo happy that I got to see a live lynx and then I got to skin him from toe to nose.

I can't wait till my Carhart's get this grubby.