Welcome back. Hopefully you joined us on our first
video on how to field dress a white-tailed deer. Next I'm going to
introduce you to Brandon Fields, who will walk you through the skinning process. So
right now we're going to go through the process of skinning and deboning a deer
Jarred is going to be assisting me as far as helping me cape the carcass, and keep
it from spinning while you work, so a good assistant is always valuable. First
thing I like to do, start on the hind leg and you simply get under the skin and
you run that right up to the back leg. And you open it up, to where you've got
the gambrel opened and you take that you can just start working it around. And I
like to, then go, start working around the top of the leg and peel this back.
And really you have to get behind the cart the deer. Getting from the side. And
you have to be very careful when you're hanging from the Achilles, that you don't
actually cut the Achilles. So be extremely careful skinning around that
part.
Keep it folded out and away from your meet. Try and keep as much hair as you
can off your meat. Another easy way to do it is if you have your basic skinning
knife with a gutting hook. It actually makes it very simple get right under the
leg, zip it right up just like when you open the carcass. You can zip it right on
around and again, just be careful when you get to the Achilles area to not cut
that.
So really the next step after you've got the legs loosened, I like to loosen the
tail. There's a seam, there's a joint right there, if you hit it right,
you pretty much pop right through the tail and you can have that totally
separated. Pull the hide on off and then you're gonna be ready to
essentially pull it off. It's the much easier way, especially when you got
someone to help you to simply pull it off instead of continuing to cut.
Okay so we've loosened the hind leg, we've loosened the tail. We're ready to
pull down, but before that we have to open the front legs. What I like to do,
nobody uses the front leg part, I like to go ahead and cut those off. There is a
joint right there, when you cut into that joint, it's easy to remove that leg. You
get through the tendons, you simply get it to loosen up, and we get a more mature
animal you get a tougher tendon, but then it will pop loose. Cut through the joint
and your leg is open. Again I like to use the simple gut hook. It makes it very
easy to just continue to pull the hide up to there. We'll work off the brisket.
So loosen the skin around the brisket just like you did at the ham, working it
downward, and what you're trying to do is you're trying to get it back and meet
where you came up the leg. Once we've done that,
we can cut through and we're ready to pull the hide completely down. We have
one more leg to do. We'll do the left leg exactly the same as the right leg. Okay
so after we get the both legs opened up, we do need to go ahead and just like we
did on the back leg, peel the hide from around it completely, so when it is time
to pull, it will come on off, and we'll be ready to go. We get a little bit around
that sternum, get it on down and around,
and get through some of that connective tissue. So that's loose, both legs are
loose. She's ready to pull. So now you've got it, you've got your friend, each of
you grab a side and really the easiest thing is just pull. If you're lucky,
she'll pull easy.
And we do need to use a knife just a little bit on the front leg area. If you
want you can always just gently come around that fat seam and continue to
loosen that. Basically letting the weight of the hide and then as you pull take
that right on down the neck.
So at this point the deer is skinned. We've got her down she's ready to go. The next
video in the series will be how we debone this carcass and get the meat
ready for processing. Thank you for Jared for helping me and you'll probably see
him in the next video as well. Thanks again for joining us. Tune in to our next
video on how to debone your hanging carcass.