76 
is pressing. For this and other reasons, skins usually have to be taken 
off in a hurry. The collector of large mammals should learn to do his 
work efficiently and expeditiously, from the time of planting his bullet 
in the right spot to make a clean kill to the final packing for shipment. 
In regard to skinning mammals, Hornaday (1892, 26) gives advice 
which the young collector would do well to heed: 
“In using the knife do not go at it in a daintily finical way, as if you were picking 
birdshot out of the leg of a dear friend; for, if you do, it will take you forever to skin 
your first specimen, and there will be no time left for another. Learn to work briskly 
but carefully, and by and by you will be able to take off a skin with a degree of neat- 
ness and rapidity that will astonish the natives. It is not a dissecting touch that is 
called for in taking off a skin, but a firm, sweeping, shaving stroke instead, applied to 
the inside of the skin, and not to the carcass. This applies to all skinning operations 
on all vertebrates, except birds.” 
The above “speeding-up” is not urged primarily in the interest of 
increased production, although frequently specimens come in bunches, 
and if not handled rapidly some may be lost. Under any conditions, 
a large mammal skins easier before the limbs arc stiffened in rigor mortis. 
In moderate temperatures, such as one encounters on an autumn hunt- 
ing trip in the north woods, no dire results will follow leisurely methods. 
Rowley (1925, 112) stresses the difficulty of saving the skin of a large, 
fat animal under a tropical sun, and states that the hot midday sun shin- 
ing for an hour on the freshly killed carcass of a lion is sufficient to ruin 
the skin, particularly the tail, which is invariably fat. 
The writer has observed the skin of a bearded seal to blister in a few 
hours lying in bright sunshine on the ice of the Arctic Ocean with air 
temperature not over 60 degrees F. The abdomen of a large mammal will 
begin to bloat with gas soon after death, and though this may not neces- 
sarily injure the skin, the flesh will soon become tainted with gas. Even 
under fairly normal conditions, the collector has to hurry to skin his trophy, 
cache skin and meat out of reach of predatory animals, or pack them to 
camp before dark. 
Skinning moose, caribou, mountain sheep, and goats in the wilds is 
heavy butcher’s work, and the Canadian collector may have to do the job 
in snow at timber-line, or in a blizzard at 40 degrees below zero. Ex- 
tremely cold weather presents problems as well. The dense coat of hair and 
fur that keeps the mammal warm in life also makes it difficult to thaw 
out a carcass that has frozen solid. Thawing may take several days in a 
tent or cabin and the meat may be needed in the meantime. If the 
shortness of the day prevents complete skinning of a caribou, the animal 
should be disembowelled, and the legs skinned up beyond the knees and 
doubled up under the body. If loose snow is kicked up to nearly cover the 
body, the thick, furry skin will retain the bodily heat until the next day. 
The writer has cached caribou in this way and found them still warm 
enough to skin after twenty-four hours of weather 45 degrees below zero. If 
the entrails arc left in over night, the gases of decomposition will taint the 
flesh of the whole body and sometimes loosen the hair, even at very low 
temperatures. However, if the collector will learn to do his skinning 
scientifically he can save time and be fairly comfortable in very cold 
weather, keeping up his circulation by strenuous effort, warming his chilled 
fingers and thawing the blood from his frozen knife blade between the 
