Chapter 382: Chapter 225: The Proper Way to Handle a Porcupine (With Many Pictures)
"During the whole skinning process, my hands will only touch the inside of the skin without thorns, or the clean muscles that have already been peeled, ensuring 100% safe operation."
"This way, this dangerous ’hedgehog’ becomes a perfect workbench. I can easily work around it, removing the meat completely from this ’thorn mat’."
After the explanation, the skinning work truly began.
As he spoke, he began preparing for the skinning process, first making two precise circles with the tip of the knife around the ankles of the wild boar’s bound hind legs.
The depth of the cut was controlled perfectly, only severing the tough outer skin without harming the tendons underneath.
Then, starting from one of the circular cuts, he gently ran the knife tip down along the inside of the hind leg where there were no thorns, creating a straight incision.
Until it connected with the previously eviscerated belly incision, the other leg was treated in the same manner.
After completing these preparations, he temporarily sheathed the knife back at his waist. Then he used his fingers to tear open a gap in the membrane between the skin and the leg bone at the ankle circular cut.
Like removing socks, he gripped the cut skin with both hands and began to pull it down forcefully.
With the help of gravity, the skin of the hind leg was easily peeled off, revealing the pink muscles underneath.
When it reached the body trunk, he once again drew the hunting knife, holding the already peeled skin flap with one hand to provide downward stable pulling force.
With the other hand, he carefully severed the toughest white membranes between the skin and the muscle with just the tip of the knife. For large areas of connection, he forcefully pushed down and separated the skin from the meat.
"Creak... Creak..."
The entire skinning process turned into a top-down, efficient, and safe operation.
The back skin, covered with thorns, was completely peeled off, like a heavy coat, during his operation.
He didn’t need to touch these thorns with his hands at all, only needing to continuously pull down the edge of the already peeled skin layer.
Time flowed slowly amidst the crackling of the campfire and the subtle sound of the knife tip slicing through the membrane.
Nearly an hour later, the entire porcupine skin with thorns was completely peeled off from top to bottom, leaving only the parts attached to the head and forepaws.
He resumed the normal knife grip, using the stronger part of the blade near the mid-back to cleanly cut the last connections at the neck and wrist of the forepaws.
With a "thud," the complete porcupine skin, like a "thorn cloak," fell onto the snow below.
And suspended in mid-air was a porcupine that had lost its skin, but it did not display the dark red of muscle.
Instead, it was almost completely wrapped in a thick, dense layer of white fat. This complete subcutaneous fat layer is the perfect embodiment of Lin Yu’an’s superb skinning skills.
He successfully separated this most precious heat reserve from the dermis layer, almost without damage, leaving it intact on top of the muscle.
Under the glow of the campfire, this layer of fat reflected a warm, enticing luster.
Only at the joint connections and where the fat layer is thinner on the belly can the dark red outline of the muscles underneath be vaguely seen through the white shell.
This was no longer a mere carcass of prey, but a giant energy block, the strongest guarantee for surviving the harsh winter.
Lin Yu’an breathed a sigh of relief. What he needed to do now was not to directly cut the muscles but to handle this valuable fat layer.
"This complete subcutaneous fat, once extracted, is high-quality animal oil. But before that, I need to take it off."
With the tip of the knife, he carefully sliced a few longitudinal division lines on the fat layer, as if mapping out a map.
Then, these large chunks of board-like fat were peeled off in pieces from the underlying muscle fascia.
These stripped pure white fat blocks were neatly arranged on a piece of clean birch bark, and they would quickly harden in the low temperature, making them easy to store.
Once this thick "white coat" was removed, the actual muscular tissue of the porcupine was completely exposed.
The muscles presented a healthy dark red color, with some residual sparse fat and complete fascia on the surface.
Now, the stage of segmentation truly began.
His first target was the prime part of any prey, the tenderloin.
Because the carcass was suspended, the muscles on either side of the spine were completely relaxed and fully exposed. He smoothly ran the knife tip along the protrusion of the spine from the neck to the tailbone.
Then, with the blade close to the spine and the inside of the ribs, he carefully sliced forward. The wrist applied even force, clearly feeling the slight resistance as the blade separated the muscle fibers.
Under gravity, the two long, complete, dark red tenderloin strips almost fell away from the skeleton on their own.
With a gentle hold, the pieces of meat with almost no fascia were in his hands.
Next, he began processing the limbs, grabbing one of the hind legs and stretching outward. The hanging position made the structure of the hip joint so clear.
Without even having to search hard, a gentle slice with the tip of the knife in the weak spot of the joint capsule allowed a complete hind leg to be cleanly detached.
The separation of the forelimbs was even simpler because the scapular joint lacked true bony connections, relying solely on muscular attachments.
All he had to do was run the knife along the scapula’s edge to sever a whole foreleg, including the scapula.
Soon, only a rib-bearing spinal skeleton was left hanging from the rope.
Lin Yu’an then picked up the short-handled logging axe and cleanly chopped it down from the knot, letting the skeleton fall onto the birch bark below.
Then he used the axe to separate the ribcage from the spine. With this, the primary segmentation work was done.
By the campfire, different categories of tonight’s harvest had already been neatly arranged on several large pieces of birch bark.
Two wild boar hind legs, two wild boar forelegs, two wild boar tenderloins, a complete ribcage, and a spine that had been chopped into segments.
The night was deep, but the work was far from over.
Secondary processing and preservation are crucial to ensuring these precious proteins do not go to waste.
He quickly and efficiently categorized and processed the segmented wild boar meat, deciding to enjoy the two tender loins and a complete ribcage tonight.
