Caught a 21 lb coon twos days ago, my seventh. Had to leave it in my truck because of work. It got maybe 50 degrees that day. Got home, skinned it, no problem. Washed the pelt (nice fur) and hung to dry with a fan for a day at ~50 degrees. The next day I flesh it... Fat doesn't look fresh like I like. It seems a little more difficult to flesh than usual, and real greasy. I'm nearly finished but don't like the job really and the grease is really annoying. So I took the whole pelt and washed it in warm water and dish soap. Now the excess grease is gone and it's easier to get some of the remaining fat off. Washed it one more time and hung to dry... I'll stretch it in the morning.

Here are the Q's... Should I have done anything different? Are coons more difficult to flesh when they're not fresh?? Is it okay to flesh a clean wet pelt? Do furbuyers REALLY need all the fat and grisle off, or just enought so that it dries thoroughly? Still trying to get these coons down...

No matter what you do, coon are going to be oily or greasy.

Only reason to wash is if its bloody (just wash where the blood is), or real muddy. The sooner it dries, the sooner you can skin it and then flesh or freeze it.
Otherwise all that washing is just wasted time in the fur shed, and giving the coon a better chance of spoiling.

To help with the oil/grease, cool the pelt down before you flesh it. Many people will put it in the freezer for a couple minutes. This will cut down on the ammount of oil that you see.

To put a coon up, do a good job of fleshing and STRETCH it (they pay for inches...aim for atleast 32" to the shortest part of the base of tail/leg area on the back).

If you worried about the grease getting on the fur, hang the head side of the board down. The grease will drip off. Every day or two you can wipe the grease off.

Thanks marbleyes, good advice, especially the freezer part. This coon was probably warmer than my others when I got to it. It really did seem more oily. That's probably why.

You must get all the fat and gristle off the coon pelt. Washing coon after they are skinned is not a good idea. wash the coon in a creek or use your garden hose if you can to get the mud and blood out.

If you don't mind me asking why shouldn't they be washed after skinning. Just curios as I have never put one up, always sold green, but thinking about maybe trying it next year. Thanks

Benji, I think washing after skinnning just increased the odds you will get hair slippage due to taking too longer to dry.

How much will you be penalized for a little grisle left? A couple of my pelts have this, but they dried fine.

Good job Marbleyes let me also suggest something I have learned this year, do the scraping, then use a good hardwood sawdust and sprinkle on the hide and scrape again, I have done this and all I can say is WOW, they look alot better and dry alot better.

To cut down on the grease and oil use sawdust and plenty of it - the finer the better.

When preparing coon pelts I cover the skin side with sawdust, the fur side and sprinkle a handful of sawdust on the fleshing beam.

After fleshing, a couple of shakes and a combing with get any sawdust out of the fur.

Coons that are washed loose their underfur density. This can and does cause them to be put into a different weight grade.
It does not hurt them to be washed to get the mud and blood out of them, but they should be washed while in the carcass, and then hung to dry.
coons that have gristle left in the neck of the coon will be downgraded to a slt. damaged or even a damaged coon. This is the way the auction companies grade coon. They say that it takes to long for the gristle to dry and when it does dry, it can cause fur slippage. Not only that, but gristle left on a coon causes a grase burn on the coon, which in turn causes fur to fall out when the coon is dressed.
A very small streak of grase here or there won't hurt a coon so much as leaving a lot of gristle in the neck or lower back of the coon.

Thanks Don, That's very helpful info.

What is a grease burn? Is is a black area that appears where the gristle was left?

a gease burn takes on many different faces. It can be a clear spot on the leather to a yellowish spot to a badly wrinkled spot in the area that to much grease or gristle has been left on the hide. It can show a blackish appearance also, but that generally says that a rub is in that area of the skin.

Hmm. By biggest coon (28 lbs) had a lot of tough gristle on his neck. I did my best with it at the time. It dried alright, but has lots of black on the neck area, kind of how tick bites look but more of it. Not rubbed, caught in Nov.

Sometimes coons have big black spots on them. Usually when they have a spot like that, there is no underfur in that area. Some of these are like scar tissue. Even though they don't show a scar.

a good way to get gristle off of a coon is to use the sharp side of your fleshing knife . use it like a sideways cuting motion it takes a little bit to get the hang of but when you do it works perfectly and it comes off easly. also always have the coons cold when you flesh if not it comes off like soup.
tyler