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training and in cooperation with state wildlife officials, the Society strives to maintain optimum habitat for all
wildlife species that depend on succession forests for survival.
The Indy Chapter of the Ruffed Grouse Society has worked with the Hardwood Lumberman’s
Association, the Forest and Woodland Owners Association, and Purdue Cooperative Extension to provide training
and education for wildlife habitat enhancement. The Society is currently sponsoring the Indiana Coverts
Program, a training program administered through the Purdue University Department of Forestry & Natural
Resources.
Bayou Bill
Bayou Bill wrote a column for years that appeared in the Indianapolis Star. Although he no
longer writes for The Star, he is still actively writing his informational and entertaining articles for
several papers. He has graciously agreed to allow us to reproduce them here. However, it must be
understood that THE “BAYOU BILL” ARTICLES CAN NOT BE REPRODUCED ANYWHERE
without his permission.
To Skin A Squirrel
"If you are going to hunt . . . you need to know how to skin squirrels," my dad said, sliding the blade of
his old bone-handled pocket knife over a hand-held stone. "There!" he said, a few minutes later, slicing a strip of
paper off like it had been cut with scissors. "We can skin your squirrel with this knife."
I don't know how old I was at the time, but I had returned home at mid-afternoon from one of my earliest
solo squirrel hunts. And I had my first squirrel. There a problem had cropped up. I didn't know how to skin a
squirrel, nor did any of the neighborhood men.
"We will just have to keep it in a cool place until your dad comes home from work," my mother said.
Testing the sharpness of his bone-handled pocket knife with a gentle touch of his thumb, my dad took my squirrel
- now dead for several hours - and rather stiff. He grasped the back legs with one hand, the front legs with the
other, and stretched the animal which had curled a bit as it cooled.
He placed the animal belly-down on the hard surface of the back-yard sidewalk, and placed his right foot
firmly on the back feet of the belly-down squirrel (Step 1 in illustration). Then, holding the squirrel's tail forward
along its back, he pulled the hair away from a spot just above where the tail joined the body. "This is important,"
he said of the next thing he would do. "Cut off the squirrel's tail and you have all kinds of problems."
With that admonition, he placed the razor-sharp surface of the knife blade against the skin on the
underside of the squirrel's tail (Step 2) and started a gentle sawing motion through skin, flesh and bone until the
tail was almost severed (a strip of skin half an inch wide remained uncut at the top edge of the tail, keeping the
tail firmly attached to the body).
Then, grasping the tail firmly with his left hand, he pulled steadily forward while running the edge of the
knife blade back and forth to remove the skin from a strip of the squirrel's back. The strip of skin was roughly an
inch wide and 2 ½ (two-and-one-half) inches long. The tail still was firmly attached to the strip of skin, now loose
from the animal.
Taking hold of the back feet, he inserted the point of the knife blade between the tissue of the back and
the skin at the forward point of the quadrangle of bare meat. Then, being cautious to avoid cutting the side tissue
of the squirrel, he made a single diagonally-forward cut that extended about two inches. He made the same cut at
the other forward corner of the quadrangle.
Then, with knife on the concrete, he placed his right foot on the tail and loose quadrangle of skin to hold
it against the sidewalk (Step 3). He pulled up steadily on the back legs until the forward part of the back and
stomach emerged partially from the skin. Keep the foot as far forward on the skin as possible because the tail will
break away from the skin of the back easily. Hooking an index finger in the crook (elbow) of both front legs (one
at a time), he pulled them free of the skin and cut off both front legs at the point where they joined the feet.
Another pull left the squirrel's head inside the skin.
However, there still was a "V" of skin on the squirrel's belly and on both back legs (Step 4). To free this
part of the squirrel from that skin, he grasped the point of the "V" of skin on the belly (Step 5) between his thumb
and the knife blade (his foot still holding the tail section of the skin against the concrete). When the "V" of skin
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