The problem of moose hair whilst skinning

I raised rabbits at one time, and started with white rabbits. Some one claimed to have an excellent buck, and since it was time to change I got rid of mine. The new buck was black, and the litters were black. One black hair on a carcass looks worse that 100 white hairs. What you can't see won't hurt you. Keeping every thing clean is the best plan whether moose, elk or deer.
 
jaydog said:
We always took our moose out in quarters with the hide on to minimize the amount of dirt/hair on the meat. Once hanging in the shed, they get skinned and picked clean 'musical chairs' fashion. Every 15 min you trade quarters with the guy beside you and ##### about what a poor job he has done picking hairs. :p Repeat until silence.........
Leaving them hang a day does help with the picking.
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LOL. I like it! Sounds like a fun hunting/drinking game.:):)


Power wash works well too.
 
the keepa said:
We wash /wipe our skinned moose/deer down with a mixture of cold water and vinegar ...followed by a quick brush with the flame from a propane torch....it singes the few remaining hairs into an easily wiped off ball of soot.
Being careful not to scorch the meat , of course .
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We have done the same. It works well.
 
SuperCub said:
While it might not be true, it is better to get the hide off any game ASAP as to assist in heat loss.

I do this and wash down the carcass (ins. and out) with cold water and then wipe down. Hanging for seven days or more will make the eating better as well.

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All depends on the situation. I always leave the hide on until the animal is done ageing. If the weather is warm, ageing may only be over night. If it stays cool then it might be 3 weeks.

Assistance in heat loss has to be balanced with the need to keep the meat clean. I shot last years moose in 20 degree heat and left the hide on for over a week since the nights were quite cool and I could insulate the meat from the heat during the day. I split the brisket and the skin and meat along the back of the neck right to the backbone. The moose was halved behind the ribs and hung. Within 24 hours the meat had cooled to refrigeration temps stayed there for the week. The meat was every bit as good as the best moose I've eaten.

This was a moose that was shot behind the ear. A moose with a lot of tissue/bone damage would need to be cleaned up faster in those same circumstances.
 
the hair situation boils down to experience and technique. A few hairs is inevitable, but breaking out a tiger torch???? holy crap guys.

Hang your moose, as this works best. Head down.
Cut around the front legs and split the hide up to the body. Skin them out and try to only touch the hide, as the hair sticks to your hand and transfers easily. Then skin out the front legs up to the body. We do this so when we start to skin from the rump down, the hide can drape over the animal, and you dont have to go mess around with the fronts with the hide in the way.
The front legs is the only place I will ever have any hair, but that being said, we are talking 2 minutes of picking hair and then it is clean.

Then you cut around the rear legs, split the hide down on the inside and begin to methodically skin the animal from top to bottom (rear to front). the hide will keep falling down out the hair will always be on the outside. Once the hide is down around the neck, then cut off the head, then split and quarter to your liking.

If the animal is quartered in the bush prior to skinning as often is the case to remove and load the larger bulls, there will be some hair on the edges. Clean it off with a hose or pressure washer but keep in mind these cut edges will be trimmed.
 
I find while skinning (Deer), when you cut the skin open, (edge of cut hide)
is when the most hair starts to fly, sticks to fingers, etc.

What WE do is to use a shop vac. As one of us cuts the hide
the other follows closely with the vac getting rid of the hairs.
Kinda hard to do that in the field though.
 
Good skinning technique followed by vinegar and water on the bloody parts.

The next day or two after, a quick brush with a stiff bristled horse brush (used for this purpose only) works like a charm.
 
We have always done a fair job keeping the animal clean while skinning, we skin ours hanging from top to botton and once done also use the water/vinegar rinse to remove what we can and clean up the meat. once we are finished we usually wrap it up in cheese cloth the keep flies and dirt off.

but with the hide on or last moose having been clumpy like it was, so little hair came off on out hands or onto the meat, it was wonderfull. Its might sound silly but il give my idea a try next year. and ill bring a torch too :p
 
I'm not a big fan of pressure washing because I'm concerned that all you are doing is pushing the bacteria into the meat. I do my best to keep the animal clean and after hanging and before cutting I peal a thin layer of the tough outer dried skin off with a sharp knife. That way I'm 100% sure the meat underneath is clean and no tough outer layer on the roasts. Takes a bit of time but I think it's well worth it.
 
Not really sure what you guys are doing to get hair all over....

If I have time (moose not shot near dark), I skin it as it lays and take off clean quarters as I go and put them in game bags and lay them on a clean tarp as I go.

If moose is shot late, it gets gutted and the body cavity opened that night, and the next morning I go through the same process I described above.

I can honestly say sometimes I have no hairs at all on a piece, with maybe just a very few on average.

Maybe guys shooting early moose might affect this, weather wise? I shoot mine in the rut...
 
I remember i the 80's a couple young rookies with their first moose driving around town with a unskinned bull in the box of a Datson truck in late Sept.The dipsticks drove around for a week showing it off then you could smell the moose before you could see them coming.Another friend shot a bull in the early season Sept ,gutted it got his truck stuck and walked out to the nearest road.Hitchhiked out to the nearest town to phone for help.A group came out the next morning to get the moose and truck . The moose was unfit to eat.The butcher wouldn't touch it.To each their own I've been doing this for 40 + years as well no sense preaching to the choir....Harold
 
Excessive hair on meat is a definate technique issue. Slow down and do a good job. I started young like most hunters here. Skinning on the ground and using the hide as a clean area to quarter and bag. Now it's factory like! We have a good small group of hunters and all game gets dressed in the field. Then hauled to a nice heated shop. Lifted by a winch in the ceiling. Last year an electric winch replaced the manual chain hoist. No more ruffin' it now! Once the hide and proper appendages are removed a nice wash down with cold water from the hose and a little trimming of fat etc. Turn the temp dowm and drink. When we get older, hunters work smarter, not harder.
 
The wife bought me a nice Game Processing Kit for Xmas and it came with a good -informative video. Learned a couple things I didn't know and saw a few tricks on deboning I didn't know either. He showed that when you cut down into the hide through the follicles the hair comes out easily and gets into the meat. If you use a gut hook or two fingers under the hide and your knife cutting up and out through the hide then the follicles it sheds less. He demonstrated it in the video pretty convincingly. I will be trying his technique out this fall (hopefully) and see how well it really works.
 
if you can avoid cuting the hair you will get a lot less hair on the meat pull the knive up threw the hair that way you pull any looses hair away from the meat it just comes down to practice .i have skinned thousands of animals mostly beef pigs mooses deer goats sheep .and lots and lots of beavers and rats mink and coon .the more you do the easyer it gets and the neater it stays .take your time and donot cut any more hair then needed DUTCH
 
mbogo3 said:
A moose needs to be skinned immediately after death or the heat is kept in the body souring the meat in only a few hours even in -20!I shovel snow inside the chest cavity to cool it and clean any blood or debris. Then clean it out.............Harold
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While there may be times that getting the hide off immediately is imperative, I disagree with Harold on this one. If it is cold [-20ºC] out, I have left the hide on many moose without any ill effects. Eagleye.
 
One trick that i learned that almost eliminates hair completly is a heavy duty set of wireless shears.

1st step hang animal hide on

2 step trim the lines you cut to open the hide

3 remove loose hair with a soft brush

4 skin the animal

Shearing only adds 5 -10 mins to the gutting process but can save hours of hair removal
 
I used to work in a country meat market where we would do 150-200 deer during season. We would cut out a tongue and use it to wipe hair off the carcass. It works very good. I did the same thing with a moose and it works just as well.
 
cowbelly said:
I used to work in a country meat market where we would do 150-200 deer during season. We would cut out a tongue and use it to wipe hair off the carcass. It works very good. I did the same thing with a moose and it works just as well.
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Sounds like a wast of tongue to me.

Boiled with onions for hours, scraped, boiled more then sliced for sandwiches.
Yummy.
 
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