The last pictures look great to me. Just remove chunks of fat and meat. What works for me is a thicker board, just for fleshing, than my pelt boards. You can then turn the pelt sideways for fleshing. Hold the tail end down tight and scrape the part under the front legs in the direction of the head. This removes any chunks of fat or meat and leaves the saddle intact. Same with the shoulders. After pelting, less than a minute a rat on the flesh board, flesh and onto the rat pelt drying board. A one hand flesher of almost any type works well.

You are well on your way to producing some well handled rats.

Thanks guys

I scrape mine on the stretcher with a table spoon. Put them on sideways, scrape. Turn the rat the proper way and scrape again. Speeds up the process.

next question.. im getting some that are to big for my stretchers.. i did 11 tonight and 5 wont fit.
any tricks to make the fit with out cutting them down or buying new stretchers?


i don't have a one under 18 inches so far.. and most are running 19 -20 on the back side.
i dont think im over stretching.
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btt

I think they look pretty good. Im not an expert by any means, but if your using a wood strecher,I guess you would have to get longer ones or meybe put some sort of an extenion onto the ones you have, and I think you could put a big rat on a coon strecher, just use some duct tape or somthing to compress your strecher so you get all the length and dont make it any wider then a rat should be.

When Im skinning rats, I always have the hind leg meat want to tear off the bone with the hide, instaed of staying on the carcus, what do you guys do to combat this?