Did You know - outdoor edition

[WV Sawmiller]

   Did you know the recommended method to protect yourself from sharks and barracudas and such when spearfishing is to attach the fish your spear to a buoy towed or tethered a good distance from the diver? If a shark or other large predator fish is attracted to the smell of the blood in the water he goes to the fish instead of the diver giving the diver time to abandon his catch and safely clear the area.

    When I was diving I normally used a special ring much like a giant safety pin designed to hold the fish. I would open the pin, unscrew the point of my spear which had barbs a couple of inches long, and slide the fish directly off on to the ring then close it to keep the fish secure. Since I did most of my spearfishing at night my shots were very close and very short distances - like gigging frogs - and I shot most of my sleeping/blinded fish through the eye. If the fish was not shot through the eye I would string him up through the gills or poke a hole through the bottom lip and slide the ring out through his open mouth.

[KEC]

And you lived to tell about these adventures !

[WV Sawmiller]

   Yes but I have shed a few body parts along the way. :D Did you know you should never liplock a porcupine puffer fish like you do a bass? If I'd remembered that they eat coral I could have saved myself a thumbnail and a lot of pain and some temporary embarrassment. I assure you I got over the embarrassment a lot quicker than the lost thumbnail.

[KEC]

I once was trying to get a skunk out from under someones' deck and got impatient as I wasn't having any luck. I was determined to get it in one visit so, knowing the risks, I reached in and grabbed a hind leg, snatched it out and tossed it in the yard. Then I rushed over to it and humanely dispatched it. He managed to reach around and bite me in the process when I grabbed him. I washed the bite and it healed fine. I was vaccinated for rabies. Another time I was trying to transfer a feral cat from one cage trap to another and got careless and it nearly escaped. Determined not to let that happen I grabbed it with bare hands and that cat bit my forearm HARD. I got a nasty infection and ended up going to the doctor for antibiotics. Cat bites are not fun. The cat did not get away.

[WV Sawmiller]

  Our son caught a skunk and brought it home to show our Norwegian exchange student who had returned a couple years later for a visit. As he walked between the fences the dogs barking on both sides agitated it and it started to climb up it's tail which Sean was holding. He put it down on the walk to get a better grip and it sprayed the yard and stunk it up then bit him on the finger and got away so he had to get the Rabies shots. One a week in a different quadrant intra muscular till done. After insurance we still had to pay $800. I told my wife not to be too hard on him as I had showed him how to catch them. That set her off as he had already told her "Aw Mom, Dad will understand." So she chewed on both of us.

   Then 5-6 months later Sean and his buddies came home from fishing late one night. I heard the dogs bark then a coon squall. Sean stepped in the door and all 3 baby coons he had caught crossing the road at the lake got loose at the same time. Neele (Nee Lah) our German exchange student that year, ran to her room and locked the door. I grabbed one, Sean grabbed one and his buddy Josh grabbed the third. By then my wife and daughter were standing in the middle of the sofa and my wife said "Sean, you're gonna mess around and we're all going to get rabies!" His immediate but ill-thought out answer was "Not me. I've had my shots." He should had kept quiet or just apologized.

[WV Sawmiller]

   (I hope some more experienced trappers chime in here.) Did you know the two main techniques of skinning fur bearing animals for their pelts is what I have always heard called "Casing" and "Boxing"? Think of casing as removing a pullover shirt and boxing as removing a button up shirt. From what I have seen on shows where lots of trappers skin their catch, casing seems to be more popular.

When casing a fur first the animal is hung head down and the skin is "ringed" at the ankles cutting just through the skin. Next the skin is cut from one ankle to the other along both legs and under the tail. The tail is either split and skinned or cut through and the bone is pulled out. The skin is loosened around the legs which are pulled free then the hide is pulled down over the belly then the chest and finally the head and front feet. The front feet are either cut off or ringed at the "wrists" and the skin is pulled free. The skin is pulled over head carefully cutting it free at the ears and around the lips till it pulls off. Once removed the skin is pulled down onto a skinning frame made of wire or an appropriately sized and shaped board, that looks something like an ironing board, with the flesh side out. The skin is salted and fleshed (excess fat and any pieces of meat left are removed) and hung up to dry. Once dried the skin is removed from the frame/board and inverted with the fur side out and sold to the buyers.

When boxing a fur the same basic procedure is followed except the skin is cut up the middle of the belly and the fur is nailed to a board or holes are punched along the edges of the fur and stings are run through the holes and the hide is stretched tight, fleshed and dried. Beavers are boxed hides and when stretched they are basically a round or oval shape.

Most people skinning a field dressed deer or elk or such are basically boxing the hide. Since I hunt on my own property and am minutes away from my skinning rack I do not field dress and case the hides on my deer.

For those of you who have read the FoxFire series there is a tall tale in there about a family who had a locally famous hound dog named Old Blue who was so smart the owner could take down a skinning board and show it to Old Blue and he would run off to the swamp by himself and usually within an hour or so he would come back with a possum that size. One day the husband came home and asked his wife "Where's Old Blue - he didn't meet me when I came home." His wife replied "Well our new neighbor, Myra Wilson, came over about noon to borrow my iron and ironing board and when I got the ironing board out Old Blue jumped up and ran around us looking at it then started whining and whimpering and ran off into the woods and I haven't seen him since." The story goes Old Blue was never seen again.

[Roxie]

 :D

[KEC]

Nearly all furbearers are case skinned, that is what the buyers insist on. Yes, beaver are skinned open. The fur should be clean and dry before skinning. A lot of fur is spoiled by waiting too long to skin it and not keeping it cold or fleshing and stretching it in a timely manner. Only hides of deer,moose, cattle, etc. should be salted, not furs. After skinning, furs can be frozen or fleshed to remove fat and tissue from the skin and placed on a drying wire frame or board. Anyone who is serious about learning this should try to get with an experienced trapper and/or visit a fur buyer and ask for help to learn. Smart fur buyers will help so that you don't mess up your furs and then want them to pay you a good price for them. Doing a really good job handling furs takes experience. Some guys can flesh and stretch 100+ raccoons a day. Partly due to covid, furs prices are not good right now. 

[WV Sawmiller]

KEC,

   Thanks for the input. I was hoping for input for someone with experience on this. The only furs I ever actually sold were a few deer hides, a few coon hides (Back before the price dropped more than it was worth to skin one), a nice road killed mink and a small coyote I shot while deer hunting. I did not stretch or flesh or otherwise process them. I just cased the hides then froze them till I could take them to my local fur buyer. I used to live trap a few nuisance coons around my barn and my deer feeders but the last 2 seasons they were not worth it. I caught and killed or relocated 7-8 coons and a couple of possums off the front porch but never skinned a one due to stupid low prices. Same with deer hides. They never brought much but I always figured I had already skinned it to get the meat but after last year it got to the point it was not even worth the hassle to store them till I was traveling to near where my buyer could get them.

    I am a big fan of Tom Oar on the Mountain Men TV series. He is the old guy out in Montana who traps then processes the hides into end products getting many times the value of the raw fur.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Did you know the puffer fish, when threatened, inflates to several times his normal size? If he can hide in a crack in the coral that makes it hard for predators to get him out. If in the open water it makes him very hard to swallow. There are unicorn puffers that have rows of spines all over their bodies that lay flat when deflated but stick out when inflated.

   One night I came across a large porcupine puffer fish in the Red Sea near Jeddah Saudi Arabia while diving there. When I grabbed him he swelled up to the size of a basketball and with all the spines out so I could not grab him. Watching him breath in and out I had an epiphany and grabbed his bottom lip like a bass to lip lock him which should be in the Did something dumb thread because he crunched down. I forgot they eat coral as their normal diet. He crushed my thumb, the nail turned blue and eventually fell off. 

[Old Greenhorn]

I wonder what the difference is between these puffer fish orf which you speak and the blow fish I used to catch by the bucket fulls when I was a kid (saltwater)? Those fish would blow up when you tickled their bellies and had teeth like a rabbit, so if they ever bit down on you they made quite the slot in your finger. The mouths were small though. I haven't thought about them in decades.

[WV Sawmiller]

Tom,

   I suspect they may be the same thing as the puffer fish I saw had buck teeth similar to what you describe. One smaller version had a mask like a raccoon and I believe it was even called a raccoon puffer fish. Some had spines and were the porcupine puffers while others were smooth. You see the dried inflated ones for decoration in Chinese restaurants.

[JJ]

Howard, did you eat any of the puffer fish?
I think it can kill you quite suddenly, if not done right.

      JJ

[Old Greenhorn]

Apparently there are over 600 fish around the world in this family with similar characteristics. The poisonous effects vary with the specific fish. I was 12 years old or so when I was sent out in a rowboat for the day to "catch all the blowfish you can for Aunt Julia and she'll make us a nice dinner" which I did. We would gut and skin them and wind up with a piece of meat that looked a lot like a chicken drumstick. She would bread and deep fry them. I could eat them until I was sick they were so good. (I generally hate fish, but a Aunt Julia was the best game cook I have ever known, she made a moose meat fondu that was just heaven on a plate). Aunt Julia could also make a killer deep fired eel  but I did not enjoy the catching so much as a young boy. We would spear them off the front of a special built boat late at night. I would sit in the back as they squirmed all over the deck and kept my knees next to my ears. We'd go out when the water was calm, around 10pm, and get back around 1am, then cleaning began....

[WV Sawmiller]

JJ,

No, I never did anything but mess with them and paid the price on at least 2 different occasions. I understand there is a poison gland of some kind in there the sushi chef's have to remove. I do not know if cooking would neutralize it or not. I understand to get a master sushi chef certification the chef has to prepare a certain type of puffer fish and eat it. I do not think repeating the course is an option. :

  The second occasion I mentioned above was on a night dive at a private pier near Jeddah that belonged to the owner of all the Pizza Huts and Popeye's Fried Chicken places in Saudi Arabia. He had given me unrestricted access to dive there. I was diving with my dive buddy and his 13 y/o daughter and near the end of our dive I encountered a big, smooth puffer fish and started messing with him. Since he did not have the spines of a porcupine puffer I was able to really mess with him. He had blown up to about the size of a basketball and I was dribbling him up and down in the water. Finally I turned him upside down which he enjoyed about as much as a cat does. When I released him he righted himself in the water and turned to face me and I could actually see the angry look in his eyes as he charged and grabbed me in the left upper chest and came as close to giving me a male mastectomy as I ever hope to experience. I had on a thin (1 mil) wet suit and my whole left pecs turned purple and were a sickly yellow for several weeks afterward. It eventually healed and I wish I could say I learned my lesson. When they went to leave Jeddah, Joanna, now an ER doctor in Greenville NC, gave me a paper mache  puffer fish I have on my mantel to this day which reminds me of that dive every time I see it.


 

 This momento given to me by a then 13 y/o dive partner remains one of my treasured possessions. Her dad has since passed but the memories of that night dive at Shaker Pier in The Red Sea near Jeddah live as long as this simple puffer fish survives.

Tom,

  I had to go get a bib just reading about Aunt Julia.

[Ianab]

Big puffer in the lagoon at Rarotonga. About 2 ft long. And no I didn't mess with it.  :D



 

These guys (Picasso Trigger) on other hand will actively chase you (and bite) if you get into territory. Luckily they are only up to about 12" long, but they have a much bigger attitude than that. 



 

[WV Sawmiller]

Ian,

   I am well familiar with the Picasso trigger fish who were popular in the Red Sea too. I did not notice and swam too close to a big one's nest and the first sign I had of her was when she came nipped the end of my fins. They are very aggressive.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Tom mentioned Aunt Julia frying eels and such earlier so we can talk about them a bit. Did you know that a common eel most of us catch in the rivers and lakes have only a backbone and no ribs or such? This is one reason the old timers used to love to catch one or two to feed the kids. They could fry the eel and the meat would slide right off on to their plate.

 We used to catch them on catfish hooks baited with cut bait which was one of the reason's my dad quit fishing with anything but soap for catfish bait. The only thing he would catch on soap was channel and blue catfish and no eels, gars, turtles, mudfish (Bowfins), etc that he was not going to keep. I never ate any eels but I skinned a few and cut them up for catfish bait and they were very pretty white meat that looked very much like a channel catfish. We hated to catch an eel because they are very slimy and will twist round and round on a catfish line. Sometimes they will free themselves doing this as will a channel catfish. They difference would be you would see an empty hook with the line twisted with a catfish but if was an eel that had escaped you would have a foot or so of slime on the line above the hook. The truth be told we hated to catch them because we were scared of them because they looked so much like a snake.

 One trick I learned to skin one was throw it in the sand. It would roll and get completely covered in sand and you could hold it without getting the slime on your hands. I'd make a cut behind the head like skinning a frog, grab the cut skin in my fishermen's pincers and pull and the skin would come right off just like skinning a big fat rattlesnake. The best way to get slime off your hands is to grab a handy handful of Spanish moss and rub vigorously with it and it will peel the slime right off. If you don't live near where Spanish moss grows you need to move further south, learn to talk southern and eat grits.

 I came home from a one year tour with the 4th Marine Regiment from Okinawa Japan Christmas of 1986 via Osan Korea and spent a couple of days sightseeing and shopping there. I found the Koreans eat a lot of eels. Later we had a Korean contractor in Saudi and found they ate lots of dried or smoked eel. In the markets of Osan eelskin leather products were very popular with wallets, purses and belts being the most popular. It was very soft and pliable leather and they dyed it into some really pretty colors. Of course you had a seam about every 4-6 inches as that was apparently as wide as they could stretch the eel.

[DonW]

My thrasher terminology is likely ammis but eel skins were essential for harvesting grains. They formed the connection twixt handle and flail on a thrasher because they are so tough. When I took over my house in Holland from its original owners who'd farmed there for three hundred years, not that that mattered because the farm never was mechanized and relied on horses up till the last farmer retired in the 1970s, there were two skins plastered to a wall in the barn. Looking close I could make out a row of residue in the form of the drying skins across the wall. One of the skins remains, the other I mounted and framed as a memento. Other than that eels mostly disgust me and I steer clear.

[WDH]

When I was a boy, my Grandaddy would take me down to the big creek that was a tributary to the Ocmulgee River below Macon.  As there were no dams between us at that point and the Georgia coast some 180 miles away, the eels would come into the river from the Atlantic Ocean and come upstream to spawn in the tributary creek.  We would catch them on limb lines or small bamboo poles cut from switch cane stuck into the bank.  He would skin and fry them right there on the creek bank.  They were very good.  Had there own unique taste, not fishy at all.  Those are very fond memories for me. 

[Tacotodd]

Grandpas are "unique" in what and how they teach us the things that we learn from them, at least when we have the patience to sit still long enough.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Did you know that many fish lay their eggs according to moon phases? Where I grew up in N. Fla bluegills would start bedding around April and would be on their nest every full moon up through September. They liked sandy gravel patches and would form shallow depressions they would guard vigorously. If you could find them on the nest and ease up and drop and worm in the nest you were certain to catch a big old bull bluegill because he would move the bait of just to clean out the nest. Most times you would not see your float woggle, it would just slowly line away from the nest.

 I remember a neighbor who had lost an arm to a railroad accident who would sit on a 5 gallon bucket in about a foot of water on a sandy point on a big borrow pit made by pumping the sand and gravel out. Mr. Brown would use a long cane pole and throw it as far as he could reach to a spot in about 2' of water. When he'd catch a fish he'd simply lift his pole behind him to his wife who would remove the fish rebait and tell him when ready and he'd repeat. He could not use a rod and reel to reach the spot so he improvised.

 That old man would keep us in stitches talking about hunting or fishing - both of which he was real good at. He'd tell us how hard it was to bait a hook with only one arm because he said he had to hold with either the bait or the hook in his teeth. He said minnows were too wiggly and hard to hold and you'd swallow one pretty often if not real careful. Crickets were too scratchy and the legs would break off and get caught between your teeth and worms were too soft and wiggly and it was easy to bust one and they tasted awful.

[Tacotodd]

 :D

[JJ]

eels would come into the river from the Atlantic Ocean and come upstream to spawn in the tributary creek.

The mature eels do not come into fresh water to spawn, instead they are swimming out to salt water to spawn somewhere in the Sargasso Sea.   After spawning at sea, glass eels return to fresh water and swim upstream to lakes & ponds to grow into elvers and eventually mature eels.

There is big business in Maine to catch net/trap the glass eels for sale to Japan, who's eel aquaculture was wiped out by 2011 Tsunami.   Many fisherman made 100's of thousands of dollars in this business as it was so sudden, it was unregulated at first.   They were getting $1200-2000/lb from Japan for these eels.

Inside Maine's Multimillion-Dollar World of Eel Trafficking

They need continuous fresh supply as the eels will not spawn in fresh water or in captivity of a salt water pen.

           JJ 

[WV Sawmiller]

Grandpas are "unique" in what and how they teach us the things that we learn from them, at least when we have the patience to sit still long enough.

Todd,

   Did you ever read the FoxFire series of books? A teacher up in the Appalachian Mountains near the intersection of NC, TN & GA conducted a project to collect and record the old ways of doing things. Topics included digging a well, building a log cabin, skinning and butchering a hog, tanning hides, etc. The source for the information were the old timers in the community and the researchers were their grandkids. The old timers were very happy to show and explain the details of each of the chosen topics and a colleteral benefit identified during the process was that the kids got a much better appreciation and respect for their grandparents. It started pretty small and just kept growing. They recorded the info in a book, then another and another. The last count I had I think it was up to a dozen or so books. They are entertaining, educational and a very good reference source for people interested in local history, handcrafts and related skills.