Fur Handling Equipment for Trappers: An Overview

Trapping can be a fulfilling and enjoyable experience, matching wits with animals in the wild, learning their habitats and responsibly harvest abundant furbearers. But after the catch is made, the work begins. Proper fur handling – skinning, fleshing, stretching and drying the pelts – is an important process that can be extremely rewarding when done right. But it requires the proper know how and the proper tools. Let’s take a look at the basic items needed to prepare the pelts of most furbearers you’re likely to catch.

• Primary knife
• Secondary knife
• Knife sharpener
• Beaver knife (if skinning beaver)
• Protective gloves
• Skinning gambrel
• Tail stripper and Zipper
• Fur comb and brush
• Fleshing beam and knife
• Skinning apron
• Stretchers (wood or wire)
• Push pins (for wood stretchers)

Primary knife

I like to use two different knives in the skinning process. You don’t have to work that way, but it’s been more efficient for me. One knife is super sharp and used to make the opening cuts and cuts in sensitive areas where a sharp knife is essential. Further along in the skinning process, when working on the head area, though, the knife gets worked a lot in places where it contacts bone and tends to get dull, requiring frequent sharpenings. This is when I switch to my secondary knife.

My primary knife is a Havalon Piranta, but there are a ton of very similar knives in this category, including other Havalon models as well as models made by Gerber, Au Sable, Wiebe and others. It’s basically a lightweight, durable handle with a hinged mount that accepts a razor blade. They are meant to be disposable, so in stead of sharpening them, you can simply swap out to a new razor blade when they get dull. The blades are super sharp, and the ones I use (60XT) are durable and can actually be re-sharpened if you really want to pinch the pennies.

For my secondary knife I go with something cheap, usually a basic butcher style knife you can pick up at most trapping supply or meat cutting places for a few bucks. This knife gets dull quickly, particularly when used in the ‘grunt’ areas of the skinning process, and is sharpened pretty often. Still, you have to skin quite a bit of fur to burn through one.

Beaver knife

A third knife gets added to the mix when I’m skinning beaver. Specially designed beaver knives have a wide rounded tip that allows for skinning at different angles and making lots of cuts with much lower risk of cutting a hole in a beaver pelt. If you’ve tried skinning beaver with a standard tipped knife, you know what that’s about.

Sharpener

A good knife sharpener is key when doing lots of cutting and skinning work. Some folks, particularly the old timer trappers I know, prefer a simple whetstone. Others like the electric knife sharpeners. I’m somewhere in between. My favorite sharpener is the handheld type that allows you to sharpen while the blade is stationary. They allow you to get a good bite on the knife blade with the crossed carbide blades and really make an edge, and they have an additional slot for finer tuning.

Gloves

Before we go any further, a word of safety. Most people should know to be safe with sharp knives to avoid getting cut or worse, and be sure to take the utmost precaution. In addition, you’re dealing with wild animals, which can be prone to diseases and parasites. Wearing gloves is an absolute must in order to protect yourself during the skinning process. I usually buy disposable nitrile gloves by the 50 or 100 pack, and don’t hesitate to replace them when there’s a slight tear.

Skinning Gambrel

For most animals, a skinning gambrel is pretty much critical to the skinning process. The gambrel hangs from the ceiling, attaches to the feet or legs while the carcass hangs upside down, and allows you to work ergonomically while getting the pelt free. Gambrels come in many shapes and sizes. Some are as simple as steel rod welded in a triangle shape with hooks on the end for the legs, similar to what you’d use to skin a deer. Others use chain, and have sharp hooks or use chain run through rings to cinch down and hold body parts. A newer style gambrel uses a sharp wedge shape design that allows the downward force of gravity to hold the animal in. Either way, you need a gambrel. My favorite is the Keith Winkler style, which uses chain run through a ring on each side and holds kind of like a snare would. An added feature that improves a skinning gambrel greatly is the ability to move it up and down. You can accomplish this by simply hanging a chain from the ceiling and using a hook on the end of the gambrel to hook into different links in the chain depending on desired height. You can also set up a pretty intricate pulley and rope system, and some trappers even use an electric winch! Either way, you want to be able to have the gambrel lower when working on the lower legs and tail, and raise it up higher when you’re pulling the pelt down lower.

Tail Stripper and Zipper

After making the opening cut on a case-skinned critter, it’s time to skin out the tail. This process can take a little practice to master, and it’s made much easier by a couple of slick little tools: the tail stripper and the tail zipper. A tail stripper is a hinged, handheld contraption that you clamp over the exposed tail in the appropriate sized notch, squeeze tight, and pull the tail through to separate it from the skin/fur. Once the tail is out, you need to split it open on one side to allow air to circulate so it dries without rotting. This is done with a simple swipe with the tail zipper, a little hooked tool with a razor sharp cutting edge and a plastic guard to avoid cutting through the whole tail. You don’t want to be without these two tools in the fur shed.

Fur comb and brush

Before beginning to flesh a pelt, it’s important to comb out the burrs and other stuff that can get stuck in the hair. If you hit a burr during fleshing, the knife can be forced into the skin, and rather than shaving fat and meat from it, can cut right through, making a hole in the pelt. Don’t ask me how I know! A coarse toothed fur comb is designed to get the big stuff out. After the pelt is finished and put up, a fine fur brush can be used to get the smaller stuff and clean up the final product to be presented to market.

Fleshing beam and knife

Once the pelt is skinned out, you need to remove all fat and most of the left over meat to allow it to dry without spoiling. This means fleshing, which is done on a fleshing beam or a simple board, depending on the critter. For small animals like mink, marten, muskrat and weasel, I use a standard one piece wooden stretcher to do my fleshing. I flesh with a simple butter knife, and use the scalpel knife (Havalon) in any tough spots. You can also use a small pelt scraper that’s sold for this very purpose. For larger animals, and those that carry more fat, you’ll need a standard fleshing knife and beam.

Fleshing beams and knives come in all shapes and sizes. The beams are typically made of hardwood and are 5-7″ wide and 4 or 5 feet long on average. If you’re a woodworker you can probably make a good one on your own (that goes for wooden stretchers, too). Many trappers mount their beams to the wall or on a stand. I simply prop mine up against the wall. One great modification is a wall mounted fleshing beam that folds out for use, and back against the wall for storage. The pelt is placed on the beam and the fur handler runs the knife in a downward motion, scraping fat and cutting away meat. Larger knives and wider beams are typically used for beavers, while narrower and smaller ones are used for raccoon and fox. I cut my teeth fleshing beavers with a narrow (5″ wide) beam and a smaller (Necker 600) fleshing knife, so I now use that combination for pretty much anything I need a beam for. Fleshing knives are two handled with the blade in the middle. The blade typically has two sides, a sharp one for cutting and a dull one for pushing/scraping. Fleshing knives vary significantly in quality, and please, for the love of God, don’t get a cheap one if you can avoid it. You’ll save yourself a great deal of pain. $60-80 will get you a good quality knife that will make fleshing a breeze after some time, and will last for many years. Check out this post I did on fleshing knives for more info on specific brands.

Skinning apron

While you’re leaning against the fleshing beam scraping fat, it’s probably wise to have a skinning apron on. I’ve forgotten to wear mine a few times, and my wife almost hasn’t let me back in the house!

Stretchers

After the pelt is fleshed, it’s time to get it on the stretcher for drying. Here you have two options: wood and wire. For a long time it was common knowledge that wooden stretchers produced a better marketable pelt. By stretching the fur in a proper shape using push pins in the wood, you had more control over the looks of the final product than you do with wire. These days, however, the fur market is so poor that I don’t think fur stretched on wood commands a noticeably higher price than wire-stretched fur. And wire’s a lot quicker. I tend to use wire for muskrats, raccoons and coyotes, and use wood for fisher, marten, otter and fox. Beaver are mostly nailed to plywood boards over patterns traced in the wood. Some people stretch beavers on wire hoops, but not many. If you use wooden stretchers, don’t forget the belly boards for the solid wood types, to make sure you can get the skin off the board after it dries and shrinks. And don’t forget the push pins to tack the fur in the appropriate place.

I’m sure that overview doesn’t cover every tool you might need in the fur shed, but it’s probably close. Hopefully beginner trappers can use this information to properly gear up for fur handling. Even though fur prices aren’t good these days, there’s still a level of pride associated with producing a quality product from wild fur you’ve harvested yourself and put a ton of time and attention into. Enjoy every minute!