when i am done skinning a beaver on the belly and am starting to skin it's back out is there any way to not get so much meat and fat on the back?

i usually like to try and spend my time to get as much of the extra stuff off while skinning, rather to flesh after skinning

any thoughts or comments would be great,
thanks and merry christmas

I have not put up a lot of beaver but I found it easier to just skin the thing and flesh it with a good fleshing knife. I know a guy who can clean skin a beaver in 15 minutes, but then his real job is a surgon.

You can clean skin them on the back...or flesh it off later. If I have time....I clean skin them. If I'm in a rush...I flesh it off later.

Practice and a RAZOR sharp beaver knife and your times will decrease.

NT I hope someone shows a pictorial on this. I have been trying to clean skin every beaver I catch this season as I am not doing a lot of beaver trapping as in years past. So far I have learned that it takes lots of little cuts you have to hold the knife at a angle almost parallel to the hide. I can clean skin everything up the mid point of the back and over the hams. I have seen a clean skinned hide and it the carcass after skinning. The one thing learned from just see the after math of someone good at it was they had hundreds of small slices in the carcass.

My opinion on skining beaver if you are rough skinning and fleshing beaver is not worry about any extra meat on hide. it does not add any time to fleshing it, and if you try not to cut real close it prevents you from gouging the hide with your knife which is very easy on beaver. when i mean goughing the hide i dont mean makeing a hole. just knife marks in the leather.

Probably the thing that helps me the most is to use wires with hooks at the end to stick into each leg so I can pull and skin a tight hide. Also I recently, after 35 + years of skinning beaver, found that a third wire hooked at the base of the tail is another great addition to skinning the area from midhind legs to the tail. Try it and see.

It's been said before but bears repeating that keeping the hide pulled tightly is of importance. I clean skin beaver and go even more slowly along the back and across the hams. It is easy to gouge it there. I end up with lots of little slices and prefer a fresh, rounded, X-acto blade for this process.
And I am envious. I'm not trapping this winter and - LOL - find myself missing beaver skinning. ;o)

My Vote. Just get it off quick, about 8 to 10 minutes. Skin them all first then flesh them. Like a production line. Use a good beam and a sharp fleshing knife. Oh, and good music. LM.

Start to finish, skinning to boarding, taking the castor, and taking the skull, usually runs me 45-50 minutes/beaver. Been clean skinning since I started trapping (more than a couple of years ago). It gets easier after a few hundred of 'em.

be glad when i get faster at it.takes me about 2 hrs from skinning it to putting it on a board

The last two beaver I skinned were a SB (16 minutes) and a XL (10 min). That was clean skinned. I like to use a trough mounted on a swiveling bar stool. Saves time on having to turn them around.

The peeler is a might faster than I am but the stories I could tell about how he skinned beaver when we trapped together 30 some years ago. LOL