Recently I've seen a few posts from those who were confused about skinning skunks. This is how I do it:
I start with the head and skin out around the gums and back up on the head as far as I can. Then I make an ventral incision that is about 5 inches long starting at the "breastbone area. From there, I tube skin the whole critter down to the tail. When you get to the stink sacs they are pretty obvious. I didn't take pictures of the skinning until I got down to the "stink sac" area.
Hope these help.
This was a male skunk so you can see the testes in this photo. Behind the testes (directly under the tail you can see the muscular sacs that hold the essence.
It's a little clearer when the testes are removed.
Side view
At this point, I go ahead and extract the scent. If you don't you will cut the delivery ducts that carry the scent to the opening by the anus and get the smell all over you and the hide. I use a 50 cc syringe so there is plenty of room to get suction and a 14 ga needle so that none of the fatty globules clog up my needle.
At this point you can cut the tip off of the sacs where it is attached to the hide at the anus. This will allow you to remove the rest of the hide and it should have no scent on it at this time. You need to be careful how far down you skin out the sacs though. You want to go far enough that you are at the bottom of them, but not too far or you will cut the ducts.
In this picture (sorry for the blurryness) but you can make out the anus and the attachment points for the ducts.
I just happened to luck onto this roadkill skunk this morning with zero damage so I thought I'd try to lend a hand with these questions. I hope you found this informative. Let me know if I can answer any questions!
Richard
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