I've been trapping and fleshing coon for over ten years now. I never catch a lot and anymore I rarely even set traps specifically for raccoon. But always end up catching a few when setting traps with my young sons or I catch some in coyote sets.

But fleshing coons has always been very difficult for me. I've seen dozens of videos, plenty of live demonstrations, asked questions, and heard suggestions from people in person and on internet forums. Still, my fleshing has always been very time consuming and yielded terrible results. My knife has never seemed to magically push great strips of flesh off down to clean leather like I see when other folks do it. My fleshing knife would always push just a 1-inch wide section of flesh down 1/2-in with each stroke. Ten years of frustration and struggle and wondering why I can't do it like other people. I might spend 30-45 minutes on a coon hidea nd still my coon pelts always turn out extra greasy with soft, white patches of fat left all over them.

For some reason, this weekend I was fleshing a raccoon and had a breakthrough. I angled the knife blade a certain way, put a good hard shove to the knife, and I'll be darned if I didn't peel a nice long sheet of flesh and reveal a strip of clean leather about as wide as the fleshing beam. THAT's how it looks when other people do it.

For me, the trick seemed to be:

1) to angle the blade not so perpendicular to the beam but tilt the blade back so that the scraping edge is forward and leading the way into the stroke.
2) to direct most of the force of the scraping pressure forward along the fleshing beam instead of pushing the blade hard down onto the beam.
3) to start the stroke of the blade up above the fat/flesh in an area of clean leather to really build up some blade speed before the knife contacts the area needing fleshed.

I've seen plenty of fleshing demonstrations, but none have really gone into detail on how to hold the tool, what angle the blade should be held at and so on.

Anyways... I'm glad I'm finally seeing some progress after ten+ years of trying, disappointment, and muttering curse words under my breath.

Sounds like you might just have It figured out.
Your main problem Is you should be slicing at a angle right or left and not pushing straight ahead trying to do a whole section at a time.
The other thing you should do Is take the dull edge of your knife and take a file and square It up so you have a good edge. This will help In pushing off the fat.

I was not aware how much a difference a fleshing knife makes. I have been struggling with a el cheapo that is impossible to sharpen and keep any edge at all for years. My wife got me a post fleshing knife for Christmas. I was amazed at the difference from one ot the other. Absolut difference. My technique from watching pro after pro seemed to be right. Even the slicing form and pushing form but i just could never get the result i seen someone else do on my own. Like you i was frustrated and would even get disgruntled over it. I was literally amazed at how much less work a proper knife made the job. I am sure other knifes are just as good but this post i just got is nice.

Making sure the pushing edge is square is huge. Some of the cheaper knives and some of the others too will have a tendency to round off an when that happens you end up rolling over top of the fat instead of pushing it out.