I just read Samuel Hearne's account of his journey from Hudson Bay to the Coppermine River 1772 . In this wonderful book Hearne uses the term "singed " I do believe to mean cooking beaver with the skin on and of course eating it (I assume the meat not the skin ) This was done when the fur was of no value (summer ) .He did mention it on other animals as well . I am well aware of the current meaning on singe as it relates to Mink ,Otter ETC. Was this a method of cooking in the early days by the natives ? A truly fascinating book .

Yes, quite common on beaver, marmots, and porcupines. Often cooked prior to gutting.

Porcupine are done that way here by some of the old timers.
The porcupine is thrown on hot coals,the hair and quills are burned off.The animal is constantly turned in the fire so as just to burn off the hair but not burn the skin,the animal is periodically fished out and the char is scraped off with a large butcher knife.
When done,the skin is totally clean of all hair and grain,and looks pink in colour.
It is then gutted and cooked sagabon.
When the hair and quills are singed off it smells very bad.I have never seen beaver have the hair singed off prior to cooking.They are normally skinned clean with a bone and then cooked sagabon.
Geese are plucked and cooked sagabon also.

I've watched the Hmong do that with several different animals.

Some of the digger Indians in the great basin were observed singing beaver much to the chagrin of the Hudson Bay brigades.

I believe Lewis and Clark commented on the "singed" method used by the indians in their journals. At first they were appalled by it but by the end of the journey had accepted it fully (for rabbit). I do not believe they gutted the animals.

i watched it on tv a few years back with my dad, on a cooking show ,from over seas

What's the name of the book?

What is sagabon? And what do porkies taste like, I've been meaning to try one but didn't kill any last fall. I know porcupine have very thin skin, at least the ones around my camp do.

When you have minimal tools, sometimes none, zero cooking utensils, this is how you do it.

Sort of like the Missouri squirrel poachers last year.
Wardens recovered 400+, all singed.

About 40 years ago my dad, brother, sister and I were fishing is Saskatchewan, we had a native guide. They were Cree Indian. They treated us to a porkypine cooked just like you said Boco. It was very fatty but it had good flavor.

Loose Goose, A Journey From Prince Of Wales Fort ,In Hudson's Bay,to the Northern Ocean .1769,1770,1771,1772 .by Samuel Hearne .I think Lewis and Clark were in kindergarten or maybe yet to be born ! One of the best I have ever read .

Yep I was invited to a squirrel hunt with some Hmong work friends and that’s the way they did it, used a propane torch some of them while others claimed it left a after taste and used coals from a fire, other then that they didn’t wast anything on or in those tree rats

Heard about that when we were down there deer hunting last fall. They were immigrants from some other country werent they?

I've eaten both porcupines, and moose nose using the singed method, and there are much better ways to cook them imo.

... yeah... that looks like the work of some kind of chinaman right there lol

I gave a rubbed up coyote to a fella who was raised in Burma IIRC. He was going to cook it fur on, guts in.