I feel that we should bring up this item of you cutting your self while skinning the catch.
But first, I hope that everyone that is out there bustin your behinds, walking for miles, plunging your nice warm hands into that freezing water, snapping your digits in trap jaws, loosing tools or traps, having traps stolen, checking a really good set for 2 weeks with not even a tripped trap and can't figure out why nothing works, are having a really, really good time and being care full.
So cutting yourself. And I mean to the bone, your finger bone. Once, due to my own fault, I had been doing a skinning marathon on a cold Saturday. After 9 or 12 hours was starting to get a little tired and wanted to try and get one more coyote done be for quitting. Course this was be for I had made my skinning machine and the yote was stone cold laying on the floor. Made the leg cuts and got it hung up on the gamble and went to work on it. If anyone knows what it is like to skin a cold, stiff, stinking coyote them you will know what horrible is like. Finally got down to the head and ears but ran out of room on the gamble cable and had to hold the head and skin to get a good face skinning. I had to pull on the hide, hold the head, and be care full not to make a bad cut on the face, had the fur bunched up in my right hand and my son came in and hollered 'supper' at the top of his voice. Well with a razor sharp knife I cut through the forehead skin and in to my index finger and 'to the bone'.
After bleeding all over the hide pulling my hand out and getting in to the house to clean the cut, trying to get the bleeding to stop; which at this point my wife had taken notice that I was standing at the kitchen sink running cold water on the cut for 10 plus minutes to get the bleeding to stop; she gets up from the table and says let me see that. Well needless to say please don't take getting cut while doing your catch skinning lightly. She was bound and determined to make me go to the E.R. but I won out. I had had a tetanus shot just short of 2 years prior to this NOT so little incident. Please do not take this lightly and be care full. And yes I still have the scare.
P S: Always wash your coyote hides in a washing machine at the laundry mat not in the wife's machine at home.