Skinning a Deer with an Air Compressor
Many hunting enthusiasts relish everything about the hunt: the strategy, patience and ultimate reward of achieving success. Skinning, however, usually isn’t at the top of hunters’ lists as the hobby’s more enjoyable activities. It can get messy and be time-consuming. Wouldn’t it be great if there was an easy cost-effective solution that made one of hunting’s more unenviable tasks a lot easier? Good news: there is.
What even some savvy hunters don’t know is that an air compressor can be their new go-to tool for skinning deer. Although it may sound odd, skinning a deer with an air compressor is simple and quick, requiring a mere five steps. Here’s how to get started:
1. Hang your deer by its antlers or back legs, securing the deer so that the air compressor’s force doesn’t tip it over or cause a mess. The back legs are probably the safer bet, as antlers could potentially be slippery from weather or erosion.
2. Cut a small hole using a knife in the deer’s thigh, just big enough to fit the air compressor’s nozzle. Then, insert the air compressor into this hole. If you messed up a bit and made the hole too big, no worries; just put a cloth around the nozzle to make it super tight.
3. When you turn on the compressor once the nozzle is in the hole, the compressor pumps air under the deer’s skin and effectively separates it from the sought-after meat. This savvy trick can save a substantial amount of meat compared to traditional skinning methods.
4. After the third step, feel around the deer’s skin for loose parts or “air bubbles”. If some parts remain stuck, just cut another hole and repeat steps two and three as needed. Deer vary in size and athletic shape so the number of times you do it over may vary, but it should be clear when it’s ready to proceed to skinning the deer.
5. Now you’re ready to skin the deer. Cut the skin along the back legs using a knife, with the remainder being already loose from the compressor, allowing one to pull and peel the skin downward. If some spots are stuck, just use your knife.
There you have it: a perfectly skinned deer with no unused meat. Using an air compressor to skin a deer is fast, easy and mostly mess-free. It’s a strategy that any hunter can consider.
WHOA!
Talk about thinking out of the BOX!
Printing this out for my brother in law!…
This is an awesome idea. It brings up two points. First, newer air nozzles have a vent built in so that if the nozzle gets blocked, air can go elsewhere. This is because the same air pressure that can skin a deer can skin YOU. This is why you don’t play with compressed air near your skin (like using air to clean your clothes!) If you use a nozzle for skinning, you will either have to use an older, non-vented nozzle, or defeat the vent of newer nozzles.
Note to Carl:
it’s not the side vents that you have to worry about is you can push the nozzle in far enough that the side vents are also covered. But some of the new OSHA requirements limit the amount of pressure that can exit the nozzle. So the older nozzles are better than the new OSHA compliant nozzles.
Sounds like an interesting idea, but I have one question. Every deer I’ve seen killed with a weapon has one or more holes in the hide. How does that affect this method of skinning?
gutting a deer makes a pretty big hole in the hide! please tell me I don’t have to lug a bruiser out of the woods to my air compressor with an extra 45 lbs of viscera and then gut it at the homestead; plus remove the guts from the area. If that’s the case I really like old school methods