I had just applied for governmental assistance.
We’d found the cutest little cottage in Elfin Forest—a barn converted into a 1200sf living space. It was the most room we’d ever had to ourselves with plenty of land for growing food.
As you might imagine, the winding road leading into this private, wooded drive proved quite lethal to the wild animals attempting to cross. So, it was right after my son saw a dead raccoon bloated up on the side of the road that we struck up a conversation about what a waste it was not to use fresh road kill for something.
We ran with the idea of starting a business called Compassionate Pelts, where we’d use the humanely harvested animal skins to make clothes for a profit. Yes, these were the kinds of conversations I had, daily, with my 10 year-old, free-schooling son, while my six year old daughter and I focused on the more etherial world.
What I didn’t fully consider when I agreed to pick up the next dead animal we encountered was that the idealistic vision of giving my son this experience might not match, well, the actual… reality.
The whole thing started when my ex-boyfriend, Ford, came to visit and decided to take a jog down the road. Unaware of my recent pact with my son, he returned, reporting a dead coyote that had recently been hit.
Of course, I immediately insisted he go back and get it. Hesitantly, he agreed (I’m guessing this is where he probably began to remember exactly why it didn’t work out for us) and I handed him a big, thick, black Hefty bag.
He returned with the dead body and set it down on the ground while I called my dear friend and mentor, Randolph (who you’ll definitely hear more about in other blogs) to ask him what to do with it. Since we’d be seeing him in a couple of days, he had me toss it into the freezer with instructions to take it out to thaw the night before heading over to Creek, an 11 acre nature conservancy where we gathered weekly with other mostly single moms and kids. .
The night before we planned to go, I did exactly as he told me and took out the frozen coyote, setting it on the floor to thaw over night. What I didn’t foresee, however, was an unexpected visit from the welfare department, first thing in the morning, to complete the application I had recently submitted.
A knock on the kitchen door was rare, since we lived so far off the beaten path, and I slowly opened it to a very official looking woman with a tight, low bun and clipboard, wanting to take a look around and ask a few questions in order to “verify our need.”
This was awkward, to say the least, given my request for assistance feeding my children and the fresh road kill laying behind me on the floor. With a deep breath and as much composure as I could muster, I smiled, invited her in and positioned myself just between her and what could have certainly been mistaken as evidence of need.
However, after a few relatively benign questions, she appeared satisfied enough with my application and left. I exhaled, loaded up the dead animal, strapped my kids in their seats and headed out to skin this thing with Randolph and the others.
As soon as we arrived, Randolph hung the carcass from a tree by its back feet and we got to work on it. I can still feel the buzz I felt that day having given my children this experience. Several hours later, we were the proud owners of the nastiest flea, tick and mite infested coyote pelt we’d ever seen this close up—something I had not considered in my blissful vision of what this experience would entail.
Now, at this point, Randolph swears he gave me explicit instructions on how to clean it up more and I imagine he probably did and I’m sure I intended to, but #singlemombrain clearly derailed the plans and that pelt got thrown on top of my fridge in that same Hefty bag and… forgotten. Forgotten for so long, in fact, that I eventually started wondering exactly where that horrid, putrid smell could be emanating from. The pungent cloud eventually encapsulated my entire kitchen. It was the kind of smell that crawls up into your nose and stays with you the entire day. So, I was mid-massage at the spa where I worked, when it finally dawned on me, “Oh shit, it’s the pelt!”
I will tell you that I had never smelled decomposing animal parts like this ever before and hope I never will again. So, I swiftly returned home, grabbed the bag, ran out to the edge of the forest and flung that rotting piece of flesh as far into the trees as I possibly could, certain that was the end of it, until…
I’d say it was several months later, while washing dishes at the kitchen sink, gazing out into the grassy, green yard dotted with yellow, Sourgrass flowers when I noticed an unidentifiable, furry lump of something on the ground outside. Curious what had died, I went out to investigate and would you believe that musty old piece of pelt had somehow crawled back out of the dense, dark forest to which it had been cast and made its way back to me?
Years later, I heard the story of The Hunter and the Fox Woman told by Martin Shaw. If you haven’t heard it, you may enjoy looking it up and having a listen. If I feel inspired once I finish this blog, I may even record it, myself, and embed it here. But the message that you can never take the wild out of the Fox Woman left me reflecting deeply on this experience.
Since this is a blog on skinning roadkill and I clearly sucked a it, I reached out to Wilderbabe Shayna Rose, lead alchemist at The Faery Apothecary, teacher of ancestral skills and one of the very few babysitters I ever let care for my feral children and asked her to lay out the proper steps below. I hope this gets you further along than I, and would love to see what you come up with and hear about your animal skinning experience.
How to Skin Roadkill by Shayna Rose
I remember well that very cottage where Christy was living in this story. I remember playing faeries and wildlings with her kids under the pomegranate tree and being so inspired that she had lived in a teepee as a single mom. Maybe that was a foreshadowing to the path I would take years later, eventually finding my way into ancestral skills and a way of life that honors the cyclical nature of Mother Earth.
The following instructions include the basics on skinning roadkill and preserving the pelt.
Get the Road Kill
If you want a pleasant experience, try and get the road kill early in the morning or on a cold winter’s day. You can tell how fresh it is by looking at how clear the eyes are. Hopefully it isn’t too bloated already. I personally wouldn’t bother with something that has been sitting out in the sun too long. The fresher the better, it shouldn’t be stinky. That would make for a very unpleasant experience, but people do it, especially if you find something amazing like a fox, for example. You might be apt to put up with the stink for a fine red fox pelt.
Choose Your Tools
Your tools are important. Like the tools you would use in a ritual, they can be fitted to the occasion and something special to you. I like a smaller blade that I have more control over—about the length of my index finger. I blacksmithed the knife that I use, myself, for processing animals. It has a handle made from Willow, a tree that grows by the water that is well known for drinking in the sadness of death.
Normally, if the animal is fresh enough and something that I would feel comfortable eating, I would gut the animal first. But processing roadkill for eating can be left for another day. In this case, we are not going to gut the animal.
Cut into the Skin
Place the animal on its back or side, hopefully rigor mortis has not set in and you can get it to lie on its back. To start, take your knife in one hand and pick up the fur and pull it out a bit. You don’t need to have blood or guts involved if you keep your knife shallow and only cut into the skin. Start just below the chin of the animal and keep your knife shallow, cutting through the fur and into the skin. You will see the skin pull away from the meat and there will be silvery fascia covering the meat. Fascia is a thin fiber-like web of silvery white tissue between the skin and the meat flesh of the animal. You can keep pulling the fur up off the meat and to make it easier to cut into the skin but not any deeper. Cut one long slice from the neck to just above the genitals. If it’s a male you will have to cut around the genitals. Male racoons have penis bones which is a pretty cool thing to make into jewelry if you happen upon one of those. I also like to eat raccoon if it’s fresh enough. But if you are skinning a racoon you would want to skin the face which we will leave again for another time.
So now you have one shallow slice down the center of the body. Next, decide how much of the neck you want to save of the hide. I would suggest just above the shoulders, or halfway up the neck. Cut around the circumference of the neck, like a choker necklace.
Now, for the arms and legs. Cut around each at the elbow and knee of the animal, again around the circumference. You might find it easier to go a little deeper on the cut for the legs and arms. This is safe to do as you won’t have any chance of piercing the guts. You can cut down to the bone on legs and arms. The next cut will be along the inside of arm/leg and going to meet up with the line that goes from throat to tail. Keep it shallow still, it will make things easier if you don’t cut into the meat at all.
String It Up
Now it’s time to string it up. This makes it easier because you can use gravity to pull the hide from the flesh. Behind the ankles in most animals there is a space between the achilles tendon and the leg bone. Pierce your knife into that space and open up a hole. Find a stick about a foot long and put the stick ends into the holes in each of the heels. Now the legs are spread and you have a stick that you can string up with a rope. Alternatively you can tie up the legs and hang the rope from a tree branch.
Peel the Skin
Once the carcass is hanging from a tree, start peeling the skin from the legs at the top where you made your cut. You can hear the fascia pulling away from the meat in a beautiful whoosh of sound. If the skin is sticking to the leg, get your finger in there and work the skin away from the meat. You can also get your knife in here. You just want to cut the fascia, try not to cut the skin but really slice into that fascia that is holding the skin onto the meat. You can actually do the rest with just your fingers, hands and arms, only using the knife in a place where you get stuck. Get your hand in between the skin and the meat and use your fist or outer side of your hand and fingers to creep the skin away from the meat. It’s your choice at this point to use the knife or not. You will do one leg at a time down to the hips and then use your body weight to pull the skin down over the body. Pull, use your hands on the fascia or a knife to cut through the web. Once you get to the shoulders you will do the same as each of the legs, but on the arms of the animal. Once you get down to the arm cuts the entire hide will be free.
Flesh Off the Meat
There shouldn’t be much flesh clinging to the hide now, except for maybe the twitch muscles which are likely going to stick to the hide no matter what you do. Any kind of meat should be fleshed off the hide before you go further with the hide. For fleshing the hide you need a fleshing beam and a scraper. For a fleshing beam, you can use a smooth log with no knots or a 6’ diameter PVC pipe. You will need a two handled scraper. You can use a dull draw knife if you have one. If there isn’t much meat on it or it’s a small animal like a squirrel, you can use a spoon and a piece of plywood. You scrape off the meat and membrane with your dull knife or spoon so that the flesh is clean and white looking.
Preserve the Pelt
When you’ve cleaned up any meat on the membrane side of the hide you can either freeze the hide or heavily salt it. You can also tack it out on a board to dry into rawhide form. If it’s a fur bearing animal, you would want to wash the hide before tacking it out. For storing it either frozen or salted, fold it flesh side to flesh side. When you generously salt the non-fur side of the hide or membrane side, you don’t need to freeze it to keep it. If you choose to tack it out, once it dries and before too long you would want to sprinkle borax over the fur so that the bugs don’t go and ruin the fur before you are able to tan it.
