Deer Skinning -- Splitting the Lips, Nose and Eyes

[bill@hogheaven]

Summit, this may help you more than my first post. dont worry to much about getting all that meat off. After it is pickled it will stiffen up & be much easier to remove. Lots of methods have offered here, heres another gring it off with a dremel & a sanding drum. Works great for thinning all the facial areas. Good luck.

[summitsitter]

Thanks BIll I got a dremel for christmas I'll try that...Also Tim thanks for the link it really helped

[Roadkill]

Use a skinning bulb, It is a round ball shapped tool that is usually a cone shape in the other end, which helps in doing around the eyes and nose holes. You put the round part upder the skin on the fur side, and then pull it around it tightly. Some peopel actually pin in there as well. Then you can finly slice of  the meat and still be able to feel the skin under the blade. It take alot of practice to be able to do it without cutting. Untill then, you must learn how to fix the holes. You can use thin pieces of extra skin from the lips to supper glue the holes back together or sew them or a combination of both.

[Glen Conley]

Probably many of you have recognized the flesh side of the cape you have been looking at as being a little "weird, or different".  These photos were taken a few years ago and are of the very first deer cape that the STOP-ROT formulation as it is today was used on.  When I'm in R & D mode, I go over every square inch of a cape with hand tools.  By the time I do that I KNOW what is going on with that particular cape in regards to chemical responses.

[Glen Conley]

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[Glen Conley]

I thought there would be a photo of the backside of the ready to mount nose pad in this series, but I guess I thought wrong.

I show a view of a fleshed pad ready for salting, and the next shot I had was of the same nose pad after two days in the pickle.

The pickled pad will be shaved down to the point that the black of the backside of the nose pad is showing through in a uniform fashion.  The little pieces of cartilage on the nostril skin gets removed, and all the whitish/tannish stuff gets shaved off to the point where the backside of the skin can be seen.

The length of the nostril skin is a matter of personal preference and an individual's finishing techniques.  What has worked best for me is to carve out the nose on the form, install the septums, and then use Apoxy Sculpt to do inner nostril detail.  I only leave about an 1/8" - 3/16" of hairless nostril skin to tuck.  Once dry, I come back in and make the transition from skin to nostril detail with more Apoxy Sculpt, and finish.

[Glen Conley]

The chin/bottom lip shot shows 2 days in the pickle, and ready to be shaved off.  This area, and the muzzle seems to be the areas that give most a hard time.  The meat is going to pickle, and it will mount up, BUT it will shrink and dry and pucker and other undesireables, so just shave everything off down to the skin as you see.  What ever works for you to get it off is fair. 

I've seen a number of posts on here regarding using dirty stock salt in a pickle.  What you are seeing is a cape that was pickled in dirty stock salt.  All the dirty streaks shave right off, and it doesn't seem to affect the final product what so ever.

[Glen Conley]

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[Glen Conley]

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[Glen Conley]

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[bowhunterq2xl]

Great pics for the beginners, Glen. Wish I'd had those when I started out!

[Birdman01]

i use a old light bulb under the nose it works to

[teddybaham]

If I remember correctly, the bobcat video from Jan VanH. does a really good job of showing how to split lips, eyes, nostrils. It's not on a WT but the principles are the same. Check out the video.

yep, and fleshing those thin spots i use some sciccors, a little safer in my little experience, im a little aggressice with a blade some times.

[Ihntdeer]

There are some videos on youtube

[hunterray2002]

and there is a few dvd's out as well on the fleshing process useing the Benchgrinder , with the wirewheel and also the stone wheel.