I know, I just happened to get the idea to make a "short" about when I was at a certain point on that beaver...thanks for the input though.

I need to learn this. I know practice practice. How long does it take you veterans of clean skinning to do a beaver on average ? I can rough skin six to eight min. Scraping about the same maybe 8-10 min.

Nice job, Ryan. Holy Moses.

I’m going to, for real, try to clean skin one soon. I’ll be honest and post my results. I’ll be the laughing stock of America and Canadia. Lol

I spend on average 15 minutes to clean skin a blanket beaver these days. That includes taking the castors and oil sacs, hanging the castor ready to dry.

My put up using 80-90 nails, trimming off lips, ears and cloaca area, and going over the pelt with a paint scraper is an additional 15-16 minutes on average.

I was timed doing a demo at an OTC sale on an XL beaver. From first touch: whacking off the legs, clean skinning, etc; to finished on a board was 28 minutes.

USMC, when you watch Les' video notice the angle of the knife and how there is kind of a "shove the butter off the toast" movement that goes with the slicing movement. It is exactly what my strokes look like too.

Thanks. My grandpa says holy Moses a lot.

Are bears sometimes skinned in sections? Looks like the belly section has been removed?



This is a very interesting thread

Looks to me like it is just skinned and laid back. I've never clean skinned a bear, but then I'm usually selling the hide green or sending it to a taxidermist that way for a client.

I like the bear clean skinning.. another thing I'll have to try. I've skinned couple hundred but never thought of clean skinning one.
Does more fat on an animal help with clean skinning ?
I admire you guys who are artists with fur. I'm more commercial put up. If I trimmed nose etc and fussed over bvr I'd lose money as I'd be trimming weight off my hatters !

Clean skinning a fatty animal goes real well.it has to be chilled-the fat needs to be stiff like butter out of the fridge.Then you can get it superclean.
You can still clean skin one warm,but the fat is oily.

This is a great thread, and if I ever shoot a bear, I'm gonna clean skin it.

Wonder if these southern bvr are NOT the thing to try and learn this on. Maybe a fat northern one ? ?

I hear ya. Hard to change habits though. Plus taking off ears, nose, lips, etc speeds up drying time. I only have 13 boards anymore so I can only dry a max of 26 beaver at a time.

We have fat southern beavers. I've cleaned skinned hundreds of them. They skin just like those northern ones I've skinned.

Guess I'm curious, Paul are you a clean skinner or go both ways?

Must be I just need to do a bunch to get the technique down. How long for you to clean skin a bvr then Paul ?

At last count I had 34 boards so 68 could be on drying. Last few years I been hiring the bvr finished.

I've never fleshed a beaver. As a young'un, dad taught me to clean skin, and I never tried any other way. If I had to rough skin so I didn't have to lug whole beavers out of the swamp, I'd still clean skin the hide over my knee when I got home.

I was never that fast. It would take me about 20 - 30 minutes, depending on the beaver.