WAG: The excretory glands?
A squirrel or a rabbit, for example, you can basically slit them down the belly (and limbs, if you are interested in the pelt) and slide your hand under the skin across the back and hold the body with the other hand and essentially turn the skin inside out. It just peels off of them. Same for snakes. I’ve skinned a raccoon (accidental road kill like the OP) and skinned it to make a cap. Tougher than a rabbit because the pelt doesn’t separate from the muscles easily. It has to be cut away. It is even harder with beaver - it’s hard work compounded by the fact that you have to be careful not to cut the skin in the process.
ETA: Think of it as the difference between pulling a sticky note off of the table vs pulling duct tape off.
And I can guarantee that this animal’s death was less painful than that of 99% of its fellow beavers, unless it was a female with a litter of kits back at the lodge, and that would affect the kits if another female wouldn’t be able to wet-nurse them (do beavers do that?)
I used to work with a woman whose husband hunted raccoons, and sold the pelts. At the time, he got pretty good money for them, too. I replied, “And then you probably have a big BBQ afterwards?” and she said, “No, the meat gets wasted; we don’t like the meat, and we don’t know anyone else who does either, so we feed it to our dogs.” I told her, “That’s not wasteful!”
Someone who actually knows how to dress out a beaver, and how to use or sell the pelt, might have found it in the meantime.
p.s. This woman lived in the country, and she was a deer magnet! I swear, she would hit one at least once a year.
Thank you.
I’ve skinned rabbits & squirrels & such. As you say, once you unzip them with a knife, turning the skin inside out by hand & stripping it off the carcass is low effort & rather foolproof. Even for fools like me.
Other critters really have well-attached skins. Ugh.
Depending on the area, that’s a typical kill rate. Antlered rats suck.
The whole thing about making hats out of beaver skins is misleading. What the hat makers wanted was the fine fur hairs under the long ones, best in the winter. They stripped out the fine hair and turned it into felt hats, that is what a Beaver hat was, felt.
That’s where you use a skinning blade.
It’s not hard just tricky with your lesser hand. Cuts will happen. If you’re in the market to sell pelts they don’t like cuts in it.
I wouldn’t doubt you’ve skinned more than me. But I was good at it. I didn’t like it, didn’t wanna do it. I did it though.
The tail is a bitch. There’s no way to do it easily.
Raccoons swim inside their skin. They are super fatty. They are dead easy to skin. If you’r not worried about the fleshing on the pelt. It’s like tryna take a whole loaf of bread out of the plastic sleeve and not poke holes in anything.
We had a guy who wanted the coon meat. Yeech! Not me.
All these critters have musk glands that are very stinky. You don’t wanna puncture or cut that. Your pelt would be ruined. The meat inedible, if you’re so inclined.
You just have to be adept with your tools.
Are there rules that changes things if you hit some critter with your car out of hunting season or can you use your car to hunt out of season?
Anecdotally I had a friend who hit and killed a deer in some semi-rural part of the country (I forget where…I want to say Indiana but not sure). But, it was out of season to hunt deer (which he learned from the police later).
He called the police so they could make a report which he could use for insurance claims. He said while he was waiting three people stopped and asked if they could have the deer since it was out of hunting season but killing one with a car was ok. He was a city boy and amazed by this. He told them he needed to wait for the police to make the report and after that, if they wanted it, it was all theirs.
He asked the police who said that yeah…killing the critter with the car was ok out of season (as in, you could collect the carcass…not that you were in trouble) but he said the cop said that can differ in different states.
Just curious, which one did you date the shaved ass beaver or the fat ass balloon?
Balloon. Sorry to be unclear. I thought I replied directly to you and your pic, not the thread, but Discourse sometimes disguises that fact.
Good gosh was she a surprise. I was a gentleman, but it was not a great experience.
I’m scrawny and prefer my ladies of a similar flavor. I don’t ask for what I can’t supply in return. Fair’s fair.
When that song I Like Big Butts came out, I didn’t get. I’ve come around in my thinking. That balloon is just my style!
Very likely so.
I hit and killed a deer while driving in east-central Wisconsin one July (i.e., well outside of legal hunting season). The Wisconsin state trooper who assisted me afterwards informed me that the carcass was mine, and I could take it home with me if I wanted it (I did not), and I did not receive any sort of “hunting out of season” citation.
Perfectly legal in Missouri.
“If you feel that there is good meat on there that you can harvest that you can cut away from that carcass, that isn’t damaged from the accident that killed it, then that’s fine,” [Important Missouri Wildlife Mucketymuck] explains.
They expect you to contact the Missouri Department of Conservation, which sounds like an awful lot of faff to me, but I suppose they want to keep track of these things. Then again, I don’t suppose that if I kill a deer, affix his carcass to my 2020 Kia Soul somehow, and drive home without making a phone call, that Johnny Law is going to come a calling. Seems they’d have better things to do.
When I lived in southern Illinois (where I worked with the deer magnet whose husband hunted raccoons), there was a local butcher shop that would take roadkill deer, and if a meat inspector determined that it was fit for human consumption, the carcass would be appropriately butchered and donated to a food pantry. If it wasn’t, the meat usually went to a wildlife rehabilitator, and there was also a facility in the region that made deer-hide leather, which is apparently the textile of choice for gloves for people who use wheelchairs.
Not believed by many but in these here parts, roadkill is not the delicacy it’s purported to be.
Out of season deer(Well all deer, but particularly in hot months)are often tick infested. Much bugaboos.
I don’t like venison, anyway. But I’m really not hankering for tick infested, road rashed venison. How would you ever get the hair off the meat?
I’ll cook it up for you, if you just gotta have it.
Me neither. Blech. And fie upon those people who keep insisting I haven’t had it cooked right. I’ve had it eight ways from Sunday, it still sucks.
OK, so when it’s ground up, spiced to hell and back, fried, and then left to stew in the chili pot for several hours … I could take it or leave it.
There’s a smell it has while cooking that is off putting.
Maybe, in an open pit BBQ and lots of time…nah, I’ll have a salad, thx.
I deplore the senseless murder of our national mascot! 
