Still new to beaver, working on my second beaver ever with another waiting on me. I've watched hours of videos but when I skin my beaver the pelt ends up with a metric ton of meat and fat left on it. This makes for slow work fleshing and it falling off the beam all the time. Hours of work for $10 got me thinking of ways to save time. How would it turn out if you case skinned a beaver, fleshed it, then split it down the middle and boarded ? Could you still get an oval pattern without leg hole ? Would you get docked for no leg holes ? With most going to hatter market do buyers even care much about that sort of thing ? -thanks

Case skinned will not turn in to the same round pelt

But cased and tanned is a really neat pelt, you have the entire soft belly fur to work with

You can make a great bag from it, selling them to others or having mittens made

If Grenwould runs a rout by you, just left the metric ton of flesh on after skinning as they pay about the same for it as fleshed and dried

Good to know, I may just sell green from now on if prices are going to stay low and green is same or slightly less than put up.

If you make your opening cut from the tail up towards chin but only go 1/3 way up and then skin the back legs like a normal open bvr you can then hang bvr by the tail and finish in the cased style. When you're done you can then split from your initial cut to the chin and have correctly skinned bvr. I do this on smaller ones for eating. All others just open and skin. With practice you can get bvr skinned in 5-6 min.

Practice means lots of bvr, after 50 bvr you'll be amazed at how much quicker you are.

Or you will smarten up and quit trapping them.

Lol haven't gotten to that point, but do have contracts with daily wage, mileage and per bvr.

I cased a couple. Been a while and I do not remember exactly how I opened them but did one different from the other. I do remember they were easier to flesh on the beam. I had them tanned and they turned out nice.

Ya, I just finished number 3 . I got a long way to go.

I'm there but my 11 year old trapping buddy says keep going.

I case skinned a blanket beaver last year and sent it to Moyles for tanning. Haven't got it back yet but I think it will look great on the wall.

For you guys case skinning do you leave them boarded like a coon then and ship them to the tanner that way??

This is exactly how I do them. I don’t split them until I’m done fleshing. That way I can hook the mouth opening over the end of the beam. Works pretty good. IMO

I dried mine as they are boarded in the pic and told the tanner that I wanted them left cased and tanned. These were smaller beaver, probably 25 lbs or slightly less and I think I stretched them on an otter board. Not sure what you would need to stretch a cased blanket beaver.

I hear ya.

I find beaver unlike any other critter to flesh. Never was able to figure out how to beam them. An hour or so of proper clean skinning instruction will do wonders for your beaver processing time.

I have tried my best to clean skin them but I still end up having to do a lot of fleshing so I just quick skin them and my beam time seems to be the same. The more I do the quicker I am.

Hutchy just place the hide dead center on the end of the beam and just keep turning It as you flesh off the outside 6" of the hide. Then you will end up with about a 5" strip down the middle. Then just hook the nose over the end of the beam and take off that center strip.
When you center the hide you have the same amount of weight hanging on all sides so It dosen't slide off the beam.

when i fleshed for buyers i always got a few and got so i just opened em up before i started.although i guess it should of been easier cased but was so used to normal it would make them harder.

I don't open them all the way,i stop at the throat this helps them stay on the beam.i also use a block with a hole in it, slide it over the hide on the end of the beam and lean against it it will hold hide in any spot on beam.