I got an otter. What's the trick to skinning around the ears without cutting them off or hacking them up?

Cut them close to the skull when skinning,they will dry fine on the board with very little trimming.There is substantial meat around the nose/whiskers that I trim off.Only takes a few seconds with a sharp knife to pare that thick stuff down.

As "Boco" stated plus I remove most of the nose cartilage and split/trim the lips to facilitate drying.

Thanks, it turned out good.

1 thing tho: Maybe it was a fluke, but it seems the tail can be tricky. About 1/3 of the way down the tail, ~near where the heavy wide bony part of the tail starts transitioning to the round cylindrical tail bone, the bone was stuck sooo hard to the pelt. Wow was it tough to get that part off. It looked kinda dumb b/c I had each end of the tail free yet it was stuck near the middle until I finally was able to twist/pull/cut the rest of the bone free from the pelt.

Thanks again for the advice. I had a great month trapping & filled my 2nd of 2 otter tags, and skinned it this weekend. I found that each 1 gets easier.

And there was a recent thread on here about otter tails. I'm glad I read it because the tail on this otter went smooth for me