Last night my neighbor be-headed a copperhead snake - since I didn't find out till this afternoon I was not able to use the snake meat for eating but still wanted to take the opportunity to utilize the skin. Check out that length (that's me looking all haggard & averting my eyes while holding it by the tail) - not too bad for a male copperhead! Below is the process I followed to skinning the snake, if you have any experience or advice please feel free to chime in using the comments section.REMINDER: * If you come in contact with a venomous snake DO NOT attempt to kill it, nearly all snake bites in America are due to people trying to kill the snake, the human may miss their mark but the snake never will. This instruction is not for killing snakes, but for using a snake already found dead either by hitting it in the road, having been killed by your pet, or hit by a mower, etc. Have respect for nature and don't kill what you don't need.*
STEP ONE: I laid the snake out on some clean paper, after having washed it off under running water. Snakes may carry salmonella so it's best to create an easy to clean surface before operating.
STEP TWO: This snake had been dead since the night before so it was probably a little more stiff then one freshly deceased. Most skinning instructions tell you to use a sharp knife, but there was no knife in my house sharp enough to cut with (and i tried them all), so I used hair cutting scissors. Scissors seem to be way easier with a cleaner cut.The head was already chopped off this one, if yours still has a head chop it off. You then start from that chopped part of the neck and cut your way down to the tail following the middle of the belly. (The belly is the bottom soft part of the snake that it slithers on.) You are only cutting the skin, don't push your knife or scissors into the organs, especially if your snake is fresh and you want to eat the meat after. It's easy to see how to do this since the skin is somewhat loose to begin with.
STEP THREE: The copperhead had some fatty membrane stuff sticking to the skin. I took my knife and simply pushed through this membrane on both the right and left sides of the skin. This part was a little harder then I thought it would be, I had to really work it- plus get over touching tons of smelly slime. Once you get this sticky membrane loose on both sides, the skin will be ready to peal.
STEP FOUR: Peeling it is actually as easy as they say, I grabbed both the top right and left sides and just went ahead and pulled back. You may have to pull hard at first to get it going, but then it comes right off "just like a sock" or like "taking off pajamas", and any other weird analogy I heard about it. (See pics above and below.)
STEP FIVE: You are now left with the snake skin. Mine still had goo-y stuff at the very edges which I tried peeling and washing off under running water. I am not sure if this is correct but I could not seem to get it all off. What I read is the skin should be clean and have nothing on it anymore.
Up top is the outside of the copperhead skin, and below is what the inside of the skin looks like. Amazing how it's not pigmented on the inside- since that would not serve any purpose in nature.
LAST STEP: I pinned it to cardboard with straight pins and placed on top a warm dry surface. It's pinned backwards so you can see what it looks like, but I am told for it to dry best you pin the white side facing up and the pretty side down (the opposite of how it's pictured below)- then rub it with salt to preserve it.
If you want to know if I was grossed out, I can tell you this - holding a dead snake feels very strange, basically just like they feel when they are alive. You can feel every movement of the spine in your hands but it's not as slimy as it seems it would be. The snake had a slightly foul smell, but I think it was from the length of time that passed since it died. What I did to not feel queasy or sicked out while touching it, was not think any thoughts. :)Read more on skinning snakes HERE. For skinning snakes to eat, go HERE.
XoXo
