>>70191Also ill post a few pics to explain my absence. April 8 is the last receiving date. For the fur auction I ship to in Canada. So I have been busy finishing and putting up some of the last furs I had hanging around.
In the pics are a couple finished coons on their stretchers that I haven't gotten bagged up yet.
Also there is a pic of my homemade fleshing beam, I made it out of scrap lumber and some 6 inch PVC, it works great. You slip the cased (skinned) animal over the tube and scrape it down with a fleshing knife (also pictured) and I use a scalpel for the delicate bits.
On the floor is a large beaver I snared a while back, it was 54 pounds which is a real monster around here, it is being tanned to go on my wall along with a pic of the beaver when I caught it. Tanning makes the hide last forever and keeps it supple, when you ship furs to auction they are still raw, meaning they are skinned and fleshed but are hard and stiff, the garment makers who eventually do the tanning finish them out completely. Being in the raw state just allows for them to be grease free and not rot in transport.
Also I have been box trapping a few nuisance squirrels around as I like the meat and use the pelts for fishing lures (I either trade for them or tie my own jigs or flies with the hair when I will be trout fishing). I also whipped up a nice squirrel burger the other day as I have a meat grinder, and some squirrel Mac and cheese.
The bags and tags are my full packages that will be shipped to NAFA in the next couple of days.
The poster is right next to my skinning area, and I reference it often, it shows the dimensions of each animal to be stretched and dried, along with size guidelines. If you notice, there is a big difference in size of my raccoons on the stretchers. The little one is actually average, I think she weighed about 16 or 17 pounds alive. The other one tipped the scales at almost 29 pounds and was bigger than my beagle.
