Reynard Wandered Into My Yard

[gitano]

And didn't wander out.



This fox was snooping around my various and sundry animal parts that are laying about when Tucker (my Scottie) 'lit up'. One 60-grain SSS from the Ruger .10/22 at 60 paces and I have a very nice, prime fox in hand. It is so nice, that I may have it 'stuffed'.

I will point out that once again, the SSS was "too much bullet" for the animal. Some of you may recall that I didn't care for the performance of the 60-grain SSS on rabbits and hares in Colorado. Unless shot in the head, they would run far enough, 5 to 10 yards, to get under a bush. In comparison, lighter-weight high velocity bullets, dropped them 'dead right there' (DRT) with body shots. The reason being that the HV bullets drop more energy in the animal, whereas the heavy 'solids' poke on through. That's fine if you WANT to "track" them, but I prefer DRT to a "good blood trail". In the case of this fox, it ran about 20 yards, and for a moment I thought I had missed. Then the 'damage' took effect and it pin-wheeled into the snow.

This bullet is a "hammer", but only for 'substantial' targets. I may have to start hunting moose with it.

Paul

[RatherBHuntin]

very nice looking fox Paul, definitely stuffable.

[davidlt89]

nice looking fox and worth stuffing. How much does it cost you to stuff a fox in your parts? God bless.

[Alboy]

Very nice

[gitano]

How much does it cost you to stuff a fox in your parts?

I'm afraid to ask. I have a 'friend' that's a taxidermist, and I'll give him a call tomorrow. I won't be surprised to hear $500. I've done a couple of small things before, and they weren't embarrassing, and I've always wanted to do something more substantial. I may give it a go on my own if the price is above what I'm willing to pay.

Paul

[davidlt89]

I won't be surprised to hear $500

that would be enough to deter me! Wow. I have wanted to get a ruffed grouse stuffed for a long time but when I first looked into it 7-8 years ago, it was 180.00 and that just seemed to steep at the time. Now it is even more I imagine. Taxidermy is one thing I would like to learn how to do also but as most of things I would "like" to know, not sure where to start. I am going to stick with the stock work for now. God Bless.

[JaDub]

DRT............  ya gotta love it!

[gitano]

So I took the hide to a taxidermist today. Only $1300 for a life-sized fox mount. I had to ask... "Is that 1300 American?"

Ain't gonna happen at HALF that!

Paul

[gitano]

So I'll start the skinning photo-essay.

If meat and ambient temperature aren't an issue, I like to wait about 24 hours post mortem before I skin a critter for the hide. This allows the blood to coagulate and it makes for a bit less blood and keeps the hide cleaner. If I can (and I can this time), I take as many pictures as I can for the taxidermist. Gives him a good idea about what the critter really looked like, and shows him that I'm 'serious' about what he does. Pictures are a springboard for discussing my expectations.

So, here are some pictures...

I'll start with pictures of the head. Here are some close-ups of the eyes and vibrissae.




This shows the spatial relationship of the ears to the head, and the coloration:


Here is the throat and view of the head from below:


Here's the left side of the head:


And a close-up of the left side of the muzzle. Many taxidermists can't get canid muzzles right. Pictures like these help.


Here are three of the teeth and one of the nose:








Here is the top of the right front foot splayed out to show the toes and claws:


And the bottom of that same foot:


Here's the top of the whole front foot:


And both front legs from the elbows down:


Here's the series for the hind foot:






Here's the view of his belly 'top to bottom':


And here are close-ups of lower, middle and upper ventral:






Here's a picture of the scrotum. This is another area taxidermists don't often do correctly.


So it's time to start peeling him. Being right-handed, I almost always start on the inside of the right rear leg. Here it is before the first cut:


And here is the first cut:


This continues until the foot is exposed below the Achilles tendon:


At that point, the ankle can be disarticulated and the foot completely skinned down to the base of each claw.










Next I move on to skinning out the rest of the right leg up to the center of the small of the back and on up to the front leg.




The skin in peeled back down to the front foot below the wrist, and the same basic procedure is used to skin down to the base of the claws.








At that point, I peel the skin back to the backbone from the back of the head to the tail.


The other side is done the same with a couple of added tasks. The penile sheath is kept intact but the p-e-n-i-s removed. (I'll show the baculum after I have it cleaned and boiled.) I remove the testicle from the scrotum without slitting it. I sever the tail between the two caudal vertebra closest to the pelvis and I cut the skin away from the anus leaving the ENTIRE anus attached to the skin.

I shot the fox on the right side right behind the shoulder. Here's the entrance wound:


Here's the exit wound. If you are careful, and you've waited for the blood to coagulate, you can skin around an exit wound and not have blood "all over the place".



I've reached my quota of images in a single post, so I'll close this one and start another.

Paul

[gitano]

Next, I skin up as far as I can on the head. This brings me considerably forward of the base of the ear.


A mistake many neophyte skinners make is cutting the ear too far 'out'. You have to get as close to the skull as you can. The BEST way to ensure that you get 'way in there' is to stick your finger in the ear as far as you can. You will then be able to tell exactly where to cut. Here is the ear canal cut correctly:

Notice how low and how far rearward the ear canal enters the skull.

After doing the same on the other side, you move forward to the orbits (eye sockets). Again, caution and patience is called for. Here is the skin as far forward as can be gotten before opening the socket:


Again, stick your finger in the eye opening and cut the skin around the eye. If you don't cut your finger, you will get all of the membranes you should:




Once past the orbit, caution is still required. You need to cut as close to the skull as possible. If you cut the roots of the vibrissae (the 'big whiskers), they will fall out. Vibrissae are actually special sensory organs. Each one has a whole bundle of nerve endings at their base, and each has it own set of muscles for moving it around to "feel around" with. Also, the lips must be cut as close to the jaw as possible. Your finger can again guide you. Once at the nose, cut the cartilage as close to the bone as possible. Your taxidermist can't fix a sliced off nose (even though he'll likely tell you he can so as not to hurt your feelings, and charge you more).


That's about it for the skinning. I won't bore you any more with 'turning' the ears (inside out), "splitting" the lips and nose, and peeling the tail. I will you this though; unless you are confident in your skinning skills, you will most likely be better off leaving the tail in and paying the taxidermist to remove the skin from the tail. MOST novice skinners cut the end of a fox's tail off. Your taxidermist CAN fix that, but again, the fix will cost more that getting him to remove the tail from the skin.

This was a big dog fox. I don't think I've skinned a bigger one, so I decided to weigh him instead of speculating. Carcase and hide weighed exactly 11 lbs.

The necropsy is next, and since that's the bloodiest of the pictures, I'll put them in a separate post so they'll be easy to avoid if they're "too graphic".

Paul

[gitano]

Here are dorsal and ventral views of the skinned carcase less the tail and p-e-n-i-s:



But the p-e-n-i-s and gonads are in the image.

I opened the chest cavity to see what the bullet had done:


Both lungs were collapsed, but it was 24h since it was shot, so that may or may not have been due to the bullet. The chest cavity had about 500 ml of blood in it, but the heart was completely intact. I am always surprised at the size of fox's hearts. I removed the heart and lungs.


The bullet had gone through just above the heart and perforated the vena cava.


Next I opened the coelomic cavity to see if there was anything abnormal.

As you can see he was 'fit as fiddle', and very fat in fact. He was living well.

I intend to boil the meat off of all the bones and reassemble the skeleton. (Of course the claws will be missing.) When I get that done, I'll come back to this thread and post the images.

Paul

[gitano]

Now if I wasn't doing a 'show and tell', I would have 'case' skinned him in which I would have skinned out the hind legs, cut off the tail, hung him up, and skinned him to his nose producing a tube or "case". But this worked a little better for 'show and tell'.

Here's the 'end' product:


Paul

[bowhunter 51]

Looks like you did a really good job of it Paul...I got one that's den'd-up in a
thicket next to my house...see 'em about once a week or so.....my wife won't
let me keep no stuffed critters tho....says they give her the creeps........BH51....

[gitano]

$1300 is what gives me 'the creeps'. I'm still not over the "sticker shock".

Paul

[Jamie.270]

$1,300 does sound a little "steep!"

So, if you had the hide cured/tanned "hair-on," How much could you do yourself with a form whittled out of styrofoam, or similar material?

I have some closed cell foam I have used to make custom coolers out of that is really easy to shape, glue etc.  It is stable with regard to solvents/resins and polyester resin bonds really well for sealing purposes.
I wonder if that would suffice?

VERY cool tutorial Paul, thanks.

[gitano]

Jamie - Thanks for the offer of the foam, but my 'sculpting' skills are limited to say the least. Given the forms one can get from one of these places:

http://www.vandykestaxidermy.com

http://www.mckenziesp.com/

and http://www.taxidermy.com/

I wouldn't even try to make my own. Getting the skin just tanned is $75. That's what is going to happen for the time being. I'll either shop around to find a reasonable price, or try it myself.

Thanks again for the offer.

Paul

[recoil junky]

Excellent job of skinning Paul. Made my hands hurt like 4377 just looking at the pictures.

I haven't skunned nuthin' fer quite a spell, ceptin elk and an occasional deer. Of all the fur bearing critters I ever took care of, plews (beaver) was the hardest to make "sale-able".  

Coyotes, foxes, bobcats, mink, mushrats and 'coons were all simple when compared to plews.

RJ

[davidlt89]

Very interesting! I have no clue how to skin like that. I can get the hide off of my animals, bout where it ends!!!!! I must say, I am very interested in seeing the skeleton once the meat is off and you have reassembled it. that I know I could do, but had never even thought of it before!!!! like I don't have enough to do, thanks for planting that seed Paul!:greentongue:

[22hornet]

Great post Paul. Very well done.

Keep it coming. I really want to know how your fox turns out.

[gitano]

Beaver is a pain, RJ.

I've got a little story to tell about the first beaver skins I decided to tan my ownself.

So... I had the skins from these 5 beavers I had just skinned, and was planning to tan them. For those that don't know, beaver have a substantial layer of subcutaeous fat that you CAN NOT get off until you get the skin off of the beaver. It's a real pain. Even when you've scraped all the fat off the hide, there's still a 'ton' of it in the skin itself. If you don't degrease the skin, the tan WILL NOT 'take'. Tanning supply houses offer degreasing chemicals, but they're pretty spendy, and getting them through the mail can be challenging. An alternative is to soak the skins in "white gas" (Coleman fuel). THAT was easy to get.

So I went and bought a 5-gal can of Coleman "white gas", put about half of it in each of two 5-gal buckets, and put the beaver skins in to soak for a while. Now part of what I have left out of the story is that this is all taking place in North Pole, Alaska in February, and it's colder than a well-diggers... cold parts. () What THAT means is that I have decided to do all of this "inside". Like in my basement. I waited 'til my wife had gone to bed so as not to "disturb her".

After a 'while' I checked the skins. It was too greasy in the buckets so I took them out and washed them in soapy water in my deepsink. Nope. Not done yet. Back in the buckets. I did that twice more. The fourth time, as I was bent over the deepsink rinsing the soap out of them, I caught myself spending a little too much time enjoying the little 'swirlies' going down the drain. I was higher than a kite! Just about the time I realized this, my wife comes storming down the stairs pretty much like "What the 4377 are you doing!" All I can say is it was a good thing I was so stoned because I was so goofy it was so funny that she couldn't be too ticked off.

She had been awakened from sleep TWO FLOORS ABOVE by the fumes in the house! I was right next to them, and I couldn't even tell! Anyway, we had to open all the doors and windows to air the house out (and we didn't dare turn on a light in the mean time)! AND IT WAS THE MIDDLE OF WINTER IN INTERIOR ALASKA! I used up a lot of marital "currency" on that one, but all in all she was a pretty good sport about it. After all, she knew what she was getting into from the get-go.

I'm looking around for some cheaper taxidermists. I'll keep ya posted on whatever happens.

Paul

[RatherBHuntin]

Now that's a funny story Paul, glad it didnt end with you lighting a cigarrette.
 
Any chance of you posting a picture of the skin, flesh side up and fur side up?

[gitano]

Any chance of you posting a picture of the skin, flesh side up and fur side up?

Not now, as it's in the taxidermist's freezer. I intend to retrieve it from him on Monday, but even then, I don't know. It likely will be frozen, and I'm not likely to thaw it out for pictures. If it's just salted, I could spread it out and resalt it.

Paul

[recoil junky]

I was so goofy it was so funny that she couldn't be too ticked off. Paul

ROFLMAO

RJ

[gitano]

Here ya go RBH.





Were you looking for something in particular? I can assure you there isn't even one hole. I'd be happy to give close-ups if you'd like. If there is some information you'd like from the images, let me know.

Paul

[Hornet 6]

Nicely done Paul, I have to say that you did a brilliant job of the skinning.
About all I can manage is to get the meat out of the animal without to much wastage.
Looking forward to the rest of the process with interest.

Neil.

[gitano]

Hooray! You finally made it. What an ordeal!

Thanks, Neil. Looking forward to your contributions here at THL.

Paul

[Hornet 6]

Hi Paul, see I told you I was persistant :laugh:

Neil.

[gitano]

I'm glad you were! I'm not sure I would have been.

Paul

[JaDub]

"marital currency"               ..........in ever dwindling supply.  
 
  JaDub

[gitano]

"marital currency"               ..........in ever dwindling supply.  
 
  JaDub

Yeah, it seems so much easier to make withdrawals than deposits.

Paul

[RatherBHuntin]

Paul,
I wanted to get an idea of how the whole thing looked and wanted to see how clean you got it.  I tried a bobcat once, but only got the skin.  Cleaning it up was tough, mostly around the face.

[gitano]

I'll take some close-ups of the face and ears. Splitting the lips takes care, you don't want to cut the roots of the whiskers (vibrissae) or they will fall out. Turning the ears is really fairly easy. You just have to be patient, have a sharp , pointy knife, and be patient. Taking the cartilage out of the nose is about the same as turning the ears.

Most of the time that I have a small animal like a fox or lynx to do, I leave the final cleanup to the taxidermist. I usually split the lips, turn the ears and remove the cartilage from the nose. I take the tail out of everything including foxes most of the time, but if i'm taking it to a taxidermist instead of a tannery, I let the taxidermist do it, but the final fleshing of the entire hide I leave to the taxidermist. There are three reasons.

First, they have the tools that make it easy. Second, any 'slips' are their fault, and they have to fix them without charge, and in fact I usually get a little "credit" if they put any holes in the hide when they do the final fleshing. Finally, if they do the final fleshing it will be in the state they want it. If I try to do it all, they will inevitably find something that needs doing. If it goes to a tannery, it doesn't matter nearly as much. You can't leave fat and meat on the hide, but they expect to do the final clean-up before they put it in their chemicals anyway.

For big game animals, I do it all and don't expect the taxidermist to do anything, or if they do, I don't expect to get charged for it. The hides are so much thicker that it's difficult to 'slip' and cause any problems. With big game capes and hides, a tannery will "spit" the skin (actually it's really "shaving") to thin it out so the tanning chemicals work better. This is particularly true for animals like elk, moose and buffalo.

I have recently heard about a technique for the "average Joe" that is supposed to work very well for fleshing, but I haven't tried it myself so I don't know if it works or not. Supposedly you take a high-pressure washer to the skin and 'blow' the flesh off. From what I've read, it's the "bee's knees". I intend to try it this summer on some moose hide I have in the freezer.

No taxidermist should charge you more than $25 to split the lips, turn the ears and nose, and remove the tail of a fox of bobcat. Most of the time I'm fine with that charge if I don't have the time to do it myself.

Feral cats are a good source of practice skins...

Paul

[Hunterbug]

Paul, did she "really" know what she was getting into with you or was it just a vague notion? :D You can still send it down here to be done for 1/3 the price.

[recoil junky]

Feral cats are a good source of practice skins...

Paul

Anybody need some feral cats? No tag or licence required.

Having it sent down here is good idee Bug. Plus we could hold it ransom. Maybe git Paul to come for a visit sorta.

RJ

[davidlt89]

You can still send it down here to be done for 1/3 the price.

I had inquired about having a rabbit stuffed here once and it was 180.00. Can't see a fox being much more. I can get a bear done for 1,300.00! Maybe putting that in mail would not be a bad idea! God Bless.

[gitano]

If I don't do it myself, I will definitely be 'putting it in the mail'. However, you really have to be careful about taxidermy "bargains". Making a fox LOOK LIKE A FOX is more difficult than you might imagine. For specialty items like this, you really have to find someone that specializes in the animal.

I'll keep 'you' posted.

Paul

[Hunterbug]

David, Paul and I looked into the cost in Denver last weekend. I think that it was around $450 for the fox. I do know that I got a virus on my computer while we were reserching it. > It's still in the shop untill tomorow. Luckily the oldest daughter got a REALLY sweet laptop that I'm playing on untill then.

[Paul Hoskins]

Great stuff Paul. I never had much trouble skinning any varmint cep't otter. I'll leave that to someone that enjoys it, if there is anyone like that.  ....Paul H

[SmokeyJoe]

Great thread, and GREAT skinning! I could only dream of doing a job like that, always being short of time and 'rushing' is only half the problem. The new forum has the option to tap/click an image to full screen them and scroll through all images in a thread. This is a perfect example of the benefit of that, I was drooling going through the entire collection of images. And I don't eat fox