Has anyone used an Air Compressor to skin out an animal? I have heard some use it on deer and was wandering if anyone used it for Fox or Coyotes.

how about bearver?

Forget it, don't work. The best thing to use is a really sharp knife. Brad

I used to work with a woman that raised goats and sheep. That is how they skinned everything. Not sure how they did it but she said it worked great. They wouldn't go back to the old way she said.

How it was explained to me is you take a needle you use for filling basketballs and sharpen it to a point. You stick this into the animal and postion it between the hide and the muscle. Set your compressor to 100 psi and blow air in until the animal looks like a ballon. A guy I know swears by it. ?

Using air to skin works and works very well.
What I do is make a small cut just above a front foot. You will want one of those needle points like you would use to air up a basketball. Insert the needle in the cut just under the hide and turn on the air a little. For most furbearers, it doesn't take much pressure to get them filled up. I can't say how it does for beaver, but coyote and coon will definitely work.
All you are wanting to do is seperate the hide from the flesh. Once you have them blown up, skinning is a piece of cake since the hide is basically free and not attached to anything.

It dosen't work on coon or beaver

I tried it on coon and beaver. The coon pulled a little easier but not enough to do it again. The beaver looked impressive for pictures but didn't do a thing for helping take the hide off. Not worth messing with IMO but you're going to do it anyway so go ahead.

Waste of time

Pop goes the weasel....LOL.

I tried it on a badger and it didn't do anything except air him up. I stuck the needle in by a back foot and put the air to him. It looked like it was going to work great. You could see the air working up and swelling the hide. When I stopped he looked like the goodyear blimp. Didn't skin any better though. As Newt said A waste of time.

MJM

anubody else? Sounds like the 'waste of timers' have it.

I have tried it on a fox. Seemed to work. The fox body it self was half frozen. The second one was a fresh kill, and it did not seem work that well. From what i have been hearing, the body should be about half frozen, this allows better seperation. I will know better later as I have some stuff in the deep freeze that I will do later.

I saw it done last winter at the Three Club Hunt in Central Arizona. Worked real well, I thought, until the lance blow of the hose, too much pressure. Did reqire a bit detail shinning on the head though.

You are wasting your time , Get a sharp knife!

I used to do it when I was skinnin gators in a taxidermy shop in florida and it was the only way to go but I never tried it on a furbearer.

I know for a FACT that it works on calves. Long story, but I worked for a research company that collected the blood from stillborn calves at a slaughter facility. After the blood was collected, we skinned the calves using air. Beleive me, it DOES work. I don't think it would work on frozen animals, but warm it works great. Makes skinning much faster than without.

i can skin as fast or faster with my winch and skinning machine.
but it does work on the light fat animals(not coon).

I worked in a skinning room for two year in the early 1980's and if it would have work I would have been doing it. I had 50 coyote days. 50 badger from start to finish. Iam talking 100's of everything. I tried it. It was a waste of time. Anyone that thinks they need help skinning a fox with, air, winch, doesn't know how to skin.

MJM