Skinning A Deer: Lessons could be hiding under the skin of ‘unappealing’ tasks

Over Christmas break, my uncle Ron told me about the first time he skinned a deer: how he didn’t want to do it at first but then he did and he loved the fact that he got to experience skinning a deer. 

It was his cousin who led him to face his reservations. “At first I didn’t want to skin a deer, but my cousin Steve said that I should learn how to skin a deer so I had the knowledge to survive if the world comes to an end, so if they go into World War III, I can survive on my own if I have to.” 

Steve led Ron through the process step by bloody step. “When we started skinning the deer, my cousin Steve showed me what to do on one half; then I did the other half,” Ron said.

The process was detailed. “The first thing I learned was you start by cutting up the legs to get the skin off. You find the elbow of the deer and you cut through the skin all the way around the elbow and cut down to the thigh of the deer. Then you pull it down until you get to where your cut ends, making sure not to pull off the meat of the deer underneath the skin to keep the meat good and attached until one would cut it off to keep it good to eat.” 

Next, there’s the deer’s skin. “You cut it off down to the head.Then you cut off the head to move on to the legs,” Ron said.

After that, he said you take the legs off the deer. “After you take off the feet of the deer right at the elbow joint, then you remove the skin from that point to the hoof of the deer.” 

The last thing Ron said was about how he got to keep the deer skin as a little throw blanket. “After I finished cutting the skin off the deer, my cousin Steve cut the meat off and cooked it, but he also let me keep the skin from the deer after he finished with it.”

So when you cut off the skin of a deer, you have to be gentle, but you have to put in force to get it off. Once you get it off, you can do whatever you want with it, but remember, like my uncle Ron, even though you might not want to do something at first, you might end up liking it.