Huhman: One thing I find will help you alot is hard sawdust or corn stock grit. Sprinkle it on the coon as your fleshing and it will help keep the liquid fat off the fur, beam and floor etc.

Great video and thanks for posting! I learn something new every time I visit here. Great site with alot of helpful posters!

200 coon would of been a "warm up" for a couple guys that I used to scrape coon with. I got a 6'5" cousin that did over 350 coon a day many times. Hard to find anyone willing to do that now though.

There are many "tricks of the trade" on scraping coon that I wished I had the time to show guys here on the forum. One of those tricks is that you don't have to use the "backside" of a scraping knife to start the head. The fastest method of coon scraping that I've seen done is "side scraping." This is the method that I've used and taught others with great results. Once mastered, coon can be scraped incredably fast. My personal best time was 28 sec on a 28" coon.

I need to make a video.... LOL!

Getrz

Care to explain what you mean by sidescraping? My back side do you mean sharp side?

Gary I will back you up on the side scraping of coon. Since you and I talked about it a few yrs. ago, I have taught my scrapers how to side scrape coon. It is by far the best method I have seen to date. Once the sides arte scraped, you only have a very narrow strip left on the back and sometimes hardly anything on the belly besides a quick clean up scrape. It is also easier on the coon as far as pulling hair through the pelt. you get very little if any guard hairs comming through un prime pelts.

are you suppose to sharpen the fleshing tool

Can someone explain side scraping? I have not heard of this term before.

I thought that that was the only way LOL
groney did have guys that would do 400 a day but not many. And when they got to the last 100 or so there was some damage showing up.
Now It's pretty much machine done with more damage then before but less costly In labor.

It should take about 5 minutes with practice I can do them in about 5 minutes and do not catch that many.

Instead of starting the scraping proccess on the back of the neck. Start on the sid of the coon, do the other side, work your way around the belly and the last thing you will have left to scrape is a thin strip right down the middle of the back.

I too would like to see a demo on this side scraping. It sounds like a good method

Gregg from NAFA does a demonstration on putting up coon and other animals each year at the Fur Harvester Convention. He is the one that turned me onto the "doing the sides first" that is the method he used in the coon video he did also.

You just place the hide on the beam with the front leg hole centered up on the beam scrape it with the dull side of your knife except were the other side may be needed. Turn the hide so the other leg is up and repeat. Do the narrow strip down the back, then the belly...I like to leave the belly too last, end on an easy note....Tom

It also makes the gristle easier to get going. The reason for that is, you done have a good run started and it just is not that hard to come pick up a small spot of gristle in the middle of the back. Like Sdavis said, you lay the coon on the beam, with the front leg facing up, the other leg directly under it facing down. You then start your cut right around the cheek area,and while I am there ,I give the head a few hits with the knife also. Once you have the cheek area started you go right on down into the throat area and then right over the front leg facing you. Cut your front legs off to about 1/2 in long. Once ypu have scraped over the front legs you then proceed on down the coon, doing about but not quite half the back and half the belly. Once you have this goung you continue on down the coon untill you get to the skirt of the coon. When I get to the skirt I most usually go ahead and sctape all the way to the tail and around to the penis hole if it is a male. With this being done you just flip the coon to the opposite side and continue just as you did on the other side of the coon.

The point of cutting off the front legs to about a 1/2"long will make It a lot eaiser to flesh your coon with the side scraping method.

Yep, thats another TOTT...(Trick of the trade)

Beav, you surprise me with your info. I invisioned you scraping coon with a spoon and finishing the job with a pocket knife.... LOL! All kidding aside, great info!

Don Wolf, you did a great job of describing "how to" on the side scraping coon info.

Getrz

Getrz you are the one that explained it to me several yrs. ago. You can probably recall our discussion on the subject. Don't remember if it was durring the time that I bought my first doz. grizz traps from you or another meeting face to face.

Thanks for the explanation.
I am always looking to improve on fur handling techniques so this is very helpful to myself and other that I like to help along.
I scraped a few coon on the weekend and tried something similar by starting on the belly and thought it to be a little quicker.
I have some more coon to scrape this week and will give this a try.
Thanks Again

Greg