to skin or not to skin

[jasper]

I would like some debate over this subject, I was always taught to leave the skin on our animals while they hang. It keeps the meat clean and you don't get that dried crusty layer on the meat. I have heard the argument that you need to remove the hide as soon as possible so the meat does not go wild. That seams stupid, the animal has the hide on the whole time it is alive. what changes when its dead. We have never skinned our game untill we are ready to cut it up. We cut our own meat and we are very carefull to keep the meet clean and the bone marrow of the meat. and we rarely have wild meat. The meat is very easy to take care of if you wait to skin it. we have never had one spoil because it did not cool down quick enough either. I just wanted to know why everyone thinks you have to skin them so quickly. It seems that just creates more problems

 

[CountingCoo]

LAST EDITED ON Sep-27-05 AT 02:18PM (MST)[p]I skin every animal as fast as possible. It is pretty easy to keep the meat clean if you bring a small tarp and transfer the meat straight into game bags. I would rather deal with a few pieces of leaves than have spoiled meat.

Body heat is the enemy of good meat and the hide is designed to keep body heat in! Other obvious reason for skinning immediately is that cold animals are a pain in the arse to skin.

Everyone has their own opinion but my animals get skinned ASAP. On our whitetail property we literally have most deer skinned quartered and on ice within an hour of the shot. In Colorado all of my animals are quartered and deboned anyway.

If you want the best tasting meat in my opinion then you need to make a clean shot and get that meat cool as quick as possible.

 

[kingfish]

First of all it's a lot easier to skin a deer/elk right after you get them back to camp. If you let them hang with the hide on it's a lot more work to skin them. The butchers I have talked to say it's best to get the meat on ice as soon as possible they told me deer and elk fat is not marbled like beef so if you let it hang it dries out, shrinks and starts to rot pretty fast. We skin and bone out our deer the same day we kill them and put them in big coolers.

 

[ELKMASTER101]

SKIN IT,
cut it into long strips and salt it down.
hang it in the sun for a week on open racks. Its done.
package it up and its good for a year plus.
don't use plastic rap or plastic bags unless you can make it air tight, or vac. sealed.

 

[dutch]

We have always skinned our deer as soon as possible. Elk however we leave the hide on while it hangs. However this is only when it is cool enough, if it is warm, we skin it as soon as possible. The only reason we like leaving that hide on is so you do not get that crusty layer you have to trim off when butchered. Personally I have not noticed any difference in the taste or texture of the meat from not skinning them right away to skinning them right away. But like I said it has to be getting down in temperatures, like 20-30's at night and 40's in the day.
Just our experience, I think everyone has a preference, just as long as your not losing your meat or letting it go bad.

dutch
" Man who excels at putting worm on hook is Master Baiter"

 

[stanley]

My opinion is to skin that dude as soon as possible!!!!!

You know what they say about opions though... ;-)

S.

 

[fisrtcoueswas80inches]

all of my animals get skinned ASAP. most of the time we get the dressed, back and camp and hung. oncee they are hung is when they get skinned.
Casey

 

[crazyaboutcoues]

Most the time I skin the animal as soon as possible. If i'm on a January hunt 15 days freezing whether, I don't skin the deer right away, it does make it harder to skin but oh well . Elk on the other hand we skin right away. I hunt in September, and it's gets pretty hot quick.

Another option is to put block ice in the chest cavity, and between the hinds and cool the meat down from the inside. The skin should act as an insulator. I only do this when I have to transport an animal in back of the truck for long distances.


www.gilawildernesshunting.com

 

[mmwb]

I generally am not in a hurry to skin unless the temps are high. Depends on how I am getting the animal out. If your not going to skin an elk, than you do want to at the minimum split the pelvis, pull the shoulders away from the rib cage and get the neck opened up. Those large animals can and will hold alot of heat in those areas, even when its chilly out. Quartering is better. Used to pack elk quarters out, but now will only take the meat out. No use packing bone. If I can line up horses, I will quarter and leave the hide on.

 

[bkhunter]

Skin it. Most places, the weather is too warm to keep any hide on an animal. I actually wrote a senior thesis in college on marketing vension vs. beef and everthing I read suggested that the animal must be skinned as soon as possible.
Wild game taste is really from three factors - diet of the animal, kill shots and handling after the kill. If you took a farm raised cow and wounded it and chased it around the farm and then loaded it up in your truck and drove around town to show all of the rest of your hillbilly friends, it would taste like hell. Quick kills, quick cooling and proper handling will give you a great tasting animal every time. I was amazed when I moved to Wyoming of the amount of people who left the hide on their animals. I moved from here from California and it was something even us goofy west coast people didn't do.

bkhunter

 

[dutch]

MMWB,
good point on the neck, we try to cut as much of the neck meat and get all the esophagus out of course as that is supposedly where your majority of bacteria lies. Get the rib cage opened as far as possible. Usually we have to come back to pack out the next day so we make sure it is in the shade, if snow is present which usually it is when we hunt we will pack the chest cavity and the in between the rear quarters full of snow then we'll put the elk up on logs, just a few inches that way the cool air can circulate around the body and nothing is insulated.
We'll also put a few spruce branches over the hind quarters to help keep the birds out of them. They still get a little but not near as much. Whether you skin or not, still split that pelvis open. If you don't skin make sure you do not leave the animal lying stomach down (a buddy of mine did this once thinking it would keep the birds out of the meat and he lost the meat even though it was cold), the fur and hide act as an insulator and kept all the heat in. So make sure they are on their backs opened up.
dutch
" Man who excels at putting worm on hook is Master Baiter"

 

[opportunist]

Try leaving the skin on an elk and see what happens.

 

[dutch]

LAST EDITED ON Sep-28-05 AT 01:26PM (MST)[p]If you are saying the meat will go bad I will bet you $100 it doesn't. BUT like I said you have to make sure it is cool enough, properly dressed and hung in a cool place. We don't do it every year but we have done it numerous times and it has not affected the meat, texture or taste.
Like I also said, everyone grew up doing things different and everyone has their own way of doing it. I should also mention we always quarter it up so that could help in cooling off also, not for sure though.
dutch
" Man who excels at putting worm on hook is Master Baiter"

 

[idahonative]

LAST EDITED ON Sep-28-05 AT 01:47PM (MST)[p]The old-timers (who, by the way know a lot more about non-refrigerated meat care than our generation does) did not for the most part skin their animals. They hung them with the hide on. But they knew more tricks about long-term storage than we do. Getting it to a cool location to hang is the biggest key. I have written journals from my great-grandpa from the early early 1900's and they would kill a bunch of deer and hang them in cold storage, all with hides on, and that was the preferred method. Wouldn't want to test that theory with an elk in September with no cold storage, though.

And, of course, a lot of that method had to do with ability to store it if you skinned it and cut it up before you were ready to use it.

 

[opportunist]

No, I am saying that if you hang it whole or leave it on the ground for more than a couple of hours with the skin on, it will go bad very quick. Quartered and hung in the shade with good circualtion is a different story.

 

[heartshot]

>No, I am saying that if
>you hang it whole or
>leave it on the ground
>for more than a couple
>of hours with the skin
>on, it will go bad
>very quick.


Maybee if it is 85 degrees it will go bad.

If it is 60 degrees I think you could leave it on the ground with the skin all day without the meat going bad.

Maybee I'm wrong but this debate comes up quite a bit and I can't believe everything people say about meat going bad so quick and easy. According to many of the senarios, alot of my meat in the past must have been spoiled, of course it sure seemed good to me.

 

[justpeachy]

I hunt in November so most of the time we leave the skin on. The last 3 years or so we skin them just because it's easier to do it when there warm.

 

[mmwb]

Yeah, I've had to leave a few overnight, on the ground, before coming back in the morning to quarter and pack. Never had any bad meat, but where I hunt--even if it gets up in the mid to high 70's during the day, it will frost at night. When in doubt, get the elk off the ground and in pieces. Make sure its in the shade for anytime it'll be there during the day. In mountain country there is a signficant diff. in temps in the timber, vs. the open, and in a drainage with running water, vs. dry.

 

[Bambistew]

We rarely skin anything until we are ready to cut it up... For two reason, one the way we pack elk out on horses we need the hide to pack with, and two I like elk meat, and like to get as much as I can. No sense in throwing away a quarter inch all the way around him... I was taught to deal with dead critters by my granddad who was taught by his and so forth. I have no idea how many elk he delt with in his life, but I'd be wiling to bet a few more than all of us combined...

If the day time temps in the shade are under 60-65 degrees you should be just fine. I think the key points which have been brought up about meat spoiling is to get them up off the ground, and open the neck up! I'm sure we could argue this till the cows come home, but its been our experience with oh... I don't know 3-400 elk that skinning is a waste of time and the meat will get dirty or hairy no mater how hard you try to keep it clean.

We open them up completely usually half em so you can drag the hinds up on a stump or rock or something to get air under them and also spit the pelvice so they lay "flat". The fronts can go sour quicky if you don't open them up though, this is even true in sub zero weather. The hide on the neck is very thick and the hair is long and insulates very well... but if you take the windpipe out, cut right up to his jaw and open it all up by skinning it back slightly you should be fine. Absolutely have to get the shoulders up off the ground. A good way to do it if its a bull is to pull his head all the way back and put the antlers up under him. That opens the chest up as well as gets the shoulders off the ground.

For deer... we do the same. Out of all those elk, I can think of only a couple that we lost the fronts on. One was a bull my brother shot, and shot up badly in the front shoulders. We're pretty sure this is the reason for it spoiling all that blood bone shards etc.

Another was a hunter who we took that packed snow in the cavity thinking it would cool it down quicker and he didn't get it up off the ground, result front shoulders sour... Snow is an excelent insulator... We even do so much as to clear the snow away from a freshly killed animal. Air will cool it quicker than it sitting in a snow pile.

Another hunter proped the bull up but didn't open the neck up... He figured since it was 20 below out it would cool off... well he found out half his elk didn't cool off to well...

And one other was again by guys that we had hunting with us, we told them how to deal with their elk if they got one down... they din't get them up off the ground and lost the fronts on thier bull. It was cold out as well, probalby in the 30's...

 

[SneakAttack]

Bone them out, put 'em the pack and go home. Don't even gut the stinkin' things anymore.

But it's still 'all about the gut pile'

 

[DallanC]

>Bone them out, put 'em the
>pack and go home. Don't
>even gut the stinkin' things
>anymore.
>
>But it's still 'all about the
>gut pile'


You need to change your tagline then


-DallanC

 

[fatrooster]

In Florida we used to completly butcher our deer right away. Here in Nevada I've hung them for days with the skin on and never had bad meat. I've also hung them in a game bag without skin for days at a time. All was good. But I did get a crusty layer on the skinless meat. Nowadays I keep them in an ice chest with ice and drain the water out periodically. Then I take them to a butcher.
I used to raise emus and ostriches. When I first started butchering I would shoot the bird in the head and they would flop around. These birds had the wild taste like a deer does but later I would hang them upside down and cut off the head and let them drain. These birds did not have the wild taste. I got out of raising them because I did not have the stomach to kill or slaughter animals in this way. But the method of slaughter does change the taste. fatrooster.

 

[kilowatt]

If you think that is cruel, here is what I witness when I was about 6-7 years old.
There was an old Italian lady who lived next door to us and one day while outside I heard something making a sound like a crying child. I was peeking through the fence and she had a Goose by the feet upside down and was trying to poke its eyeballs out with a large fork. She finally did and BLOOD WAS STREAMING OUT LIKE A GUSHER into a pan/kettle for some reason.
I had a hard time seeing that and good thing my Mom brought me back inside.

As far as skinning, I get the hide off as soon as possible. Only once did we (brother & I) when in COLO. His uncle by marriage told him to leave the hide on and hang it from the tree in yard. I tried to get him to skin it but he listened to John.
Well the weather turned so cold, it was NOV, that didn't need any ice going back home. Took it to a local meat locker here and talk about having a hard time skinning that hide off, even the butcher said he has never seen anyone do this before. Lost some meat trying to get hide off so it could be cut up and packaged.

Brian