Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 735: Dispatches from Africa - Skinnin’ For A Livin’

Transcript

Ep. 735: Dispatches from Africa - Skinnin’ For A Livin’ · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome to FLAP five dispatches from African Today.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: We are in the skinning area of camp. If you're listening,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: it'd be great if you went and watched. If you're watching,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: bear with us while we explain what you're looking at.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Or no, no, not that.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: If you're watching, bear with us when we explain what
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: we're doing as though you're not watching, that makes sense.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: So we're in the skinning area at the amp here
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: and we got a big skinning table made out of
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: just rough hewn planks at working height and allows a
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: bunch of guys to get around a carcass to work on.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: They're right now skinning a sable an elope with he's
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: got big sweeping like U shaped horns if you bent
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: the U kind of open, maybe around forty inch long horns.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: We're gonna find out.
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: We looked at how many stable do we look at?
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: Dozens and dozens? Yeah, yeah, literally dozens.
• 1:31
  Speaker 4: And this was the.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: First one that we uh, the biggest we found in
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: the first one we found that was like what we
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: were after.
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: And so we were out in the.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Field maybe an hour drive uh maybe an hour driving
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: camp because we weren't going to stay out hunting. We
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: were able to drive in a lot of the places
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: you can get a truck to. It's amazing where all
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: you can get a truck if you really want to
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: get a truck ow.
• 1:54
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, it's around here. Yeah. Yeah, we can cut
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: a little makeshift around if we have to.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: So we were able to get a truck right into
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: where we killed the sable. What would you say to sable?
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Ways?
• 2:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah and four five five full five, yeah, something in
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: that range.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Got it right in the back of the truck hole
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: because we knew we could come back to camp. Now,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: sometimes when these guys are out hunting and maybe they're
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: maybe they get way far away from camp. Beca it's
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: nothing to get thirty forty miles from camp.
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: Oh it's nothing. Yeah.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: So if you get something and you want to continue hunting,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: they might skin it and put it in a big
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: bucket of brine.
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: Correct. Yeah, absolutely, But today this is the.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Last thing we were after to day.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: We came back home and so we bring it home
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: and then we got the guys that are here to skin.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: So they got their skinning table, they got their gear,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: and they got a shed over here.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Ready.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Rick practiced this move see how well he can do it. Ready,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: that is a predator proof, hyena proof shed where they
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: dry skin, they hang meat in there, they put skulls
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: in there, and it's just meant to be.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: It's got great airflow in shade.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: But stuff can't come around at night easily get in
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: there and steal everything out of there. So that's that's
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: a super cool building. Uh back to over here. Uh,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Morgan's gonna explain a little bit about the skinners and
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: these guys Like are skinners?
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: Oh?
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like that that's professional skinn It's an occupation. Yeah,
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: they're an integral part of the team on safari. You
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: know obviously trophy care and meat prep as well as
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: a core part of what we do. And so there
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: is a profession called a skinner that we have. Two
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: of them usually encamp at any given time, and their
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: job is to completely take care of these hides, horns, skulls,
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: all the associated trophy parts, but also the meat as well.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: You can imagine, I don't know, it's gotta be like
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: low eighties right now, yeah, something like that.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: Three.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: The weather would be warmer than like day in, day out.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: It's much warmer than what most people in the US
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: would consider like typical hunting weather, because we do a
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: lot of our hunting October November. Not for everybody, but
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: for a lot of the country. You associate hunting season
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: with temperatures overnight at or near freezing right daytime highs
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: maybe in the fifties or sixties, occasionally in the seventies.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Here's much warmer, but very dry. And a thing that
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: surprised me about this climate here is that the heat
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: doesn't really matter that much because it's dry, yep, And
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: you can hang meat.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: For long period and it's beautiful. Oh yeah, it's fantastic. Yeah,
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: it's like dry aging. Once that crust forms on the
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: outside of the meat, and we always hang them in
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: a shady, well ventilated place where they're getting some wind
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: and some shade. But you can hang that meat once
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: that crust forms on the outside, you can hang it
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: for a remarkably long time, even in this weather.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: No, there's like zero smell, no bugs. It tastes wonderful. Yeah,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: you can just hang it, yep. But the thing they
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: worry about is because so many people come like I'm
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: having this made out, like I'm keeping the whole the
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: whole skin on this thing, right, I could do anything
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: else want to with the skin the way I'm getting
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: it taken care of, that the hair would slip.
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, right, absolutely. Yeah.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: So these guys, the way they're working, they're doing what's called,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: I don't know what they call it. The skinners are
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: doing what I would refer to as clean skinning, meaning
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: it's a slower process. But what they're doing is are
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: taking the hide and they're leaving zero meat, zero fat.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: They're skinning it, so it's coming off clean leather.
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: That's right, Yeah, exactly.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: And they cut, like a lot of times, if you're
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: skinning a deer, picture your skin in a white tail deer, right,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: and your garage whatever you gotta hung up, and you
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: pull the hide peels away, sometimes a membrane of muscle. Correct, Yeah,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: you know, and if you were going to turn that
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: to leather, that's got to come off it does.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: They slice, They don't pull, They slice.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Every every ounce of skin is removed, so it's just clean,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: clean leather.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's correct. And then they'll go through again after
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: and any tiny little fragments or little bits of blood
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: or any remnants on their gut, juice, whatever will be
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: manually like scraped off.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: And then once they get it clean like that in
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: that room up there, they lay all that stuff out
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: and salt it. That's right, and it gets dry like
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: thin plywood yep, exactly, and then it'll be folded kind
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: of hammered, so it's a nice flat little package, almost
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: like it could slide into an envelope.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really cool process.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: So can we uh, I'd like to ask, can you
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: ask a couple of the guys were skinners, like.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: How long they've been at Yeah, they've.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: Had the profession absolutely, Sasu Kazi Ulifana Kazi Kamai Kwagapi
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: thirty five years.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Mebia.
• 6:53
  Speaker 5: So it's after Amanda uh huh Quadi Valia in Fudha.
• 7:04
  Speaker 5: But Fundation now I feel like and I leave you
• 7:11
  Speaker 5: now your cousin Fundia journey now.
• 7:25
  Speaker 6: Becaus you know, because you went they level son.
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so he's been at it for thirty five years.
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: He's gone to multiple different countries to learn, really so
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: Africa and maybe he's also trained people from other places.
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: He's gone to the National Wildlife College to train youth
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: on the progress and he's he's brought up a lot
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: of young people through this profession. And yeah, he's been
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: a teacher and a student of this for thirty five
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: years in Tanzania.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: I'm guessing in many other African countries. To be a
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: skinner in a camp, like a camp skinner is an
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: occupation that that like being a chef, like being a
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: trained chef. Correct, you go to one restaurant, you can
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: walk into another restaurant, lay out your credentials absolutely right,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: and so it's like it's like a skill set that
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: you could take to another camp and get a job
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: or you know, move around a little bit and come
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: in and present your credentials and get hired, right for sure?
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: For sure, Yeah they can.
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: They can really go into any of these Safari camps
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: with a resume like his and you know the places
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: he's worked and the things he's done. He's he's a
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: serious professional. I mean, there's there's no doubt about it.
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: This is a real trade.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Can you ask who did he start learning from his
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: dad or start learning from other.
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: Skinnersa Ulianza Ja Kazi Ni No Nana Quani and.
• 9:23
  Speaker 7: Kin and beneath certificate to certificate.
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: So he he actually went to like the Wildlife the
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: National Wildlife College to study there, so he didn't come
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: up to the trade learning from any particular individual he had. Yeah,
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: he pursued it and then yeah, he went to went
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: to Uganda and South Africa to clearly like hone his craft.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: So that's how the skin works. The skull like the skin.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: Comes off, gets clean skinned, as Morgan said, they then
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: touch it up to make sure there's no fat, no
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: bits of muscle or anything on there. It's just like
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: what will become leather and it's salted and then it's
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: shelf stable. Ye correct, the skull. They'll clean it up
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: pretty good and they'll pack it. If you look down there,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: we have a war hoog skull land down there. They'll
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: pack it in salt just to dry it out, so
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: zero flies on it, zero odor, Yeah, and that can
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: be taken care of later. Then the meat is kind
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: of interesting that there's a bunch of different outlets for
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: the meat. We every night when we got here, we
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: were eating some meat that they had had from other hunts.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: But we every night, me.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: You, our crew, every night we eat the game animals
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: that come in. All the guys that work here are
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: at the same time eating game animals that come in.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: That's like lunch dinner, right, is what's happening when something
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: big comes in, Like we came in with a buffalo,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: and I'm assuming some of this. If there's plenty to
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: go round for everybody, guys will kind of divide this out,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: and now you might come in and hanging on these
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: trees might be different joints, shoulders, hams, whatever, and what's
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: not gonna get used immediately gets cut into drying strips
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: to make like there's some that's brinding made in like Billtong,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: and some is just flat out dried, yep. And guys
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: will save up bags. So a couple of days ago,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: we took a trip into town and one of the
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: guys that works here brought back to his family and
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: his little neighborhood brought back like a sack of the
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: dried meat, which is rehydrated.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: So picture of your cutting meat.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: Is kind of like I'm trying to think what would
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: be the size of how you describe the size of
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: the strip.
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's sort of twelve eight to twelve inches long,
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: potentially a little long inch by inch square.
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, inch by inch square exactly.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: And they hang it up.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: It's not season, it's hung and dried, and then throughout
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: the year they say it lasts. One of the guys
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: told us that he'll eat it for six months yep.
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: That meat they cut up and just rehydrate it and
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: cook it down, boil it whatever, until it kind of
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: comes back to life.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's pretty damn good.
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really good. We so it the other day.
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: It was delicious, So.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: It can't be used. What's not used fresh is dried
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: like that.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: What's kind of interesting, you see, it's like a very
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: coveted it's a coveted item. Oh yeah, absolutely. And coming
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: back here the day when we brought a buffalo in.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Coming back here, man, it was like everybody was bustling around.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of getting it prepared before it
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: goes bad so they can have their stop, building up
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: the stash to take back to the village at the
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: end of the season or throughout the season, depending on
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: where they live.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The tail.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: A lot of these animals, unlike in the US, A
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: lot of these animals have a big tail.
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: So we had like an oxtail soup off a buffalo
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: a tail on this is pretty small, but there's some
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: pieces on there. Uh liver, we see that get consumed.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: We've eaten and watched guys eat heart.
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: They take the stomach and empty all the grass out
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: of the stomachs, rinse that out, cut that into maybe
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: inch and a half by inch and a half squares, yep,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: cook that down.
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: Yep. That becomes a super stew.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: When we left, like one carcass that we did in
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: the field, we cut it up in the field.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: When we left, there was the.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: Stomach contents laying there, yep. And some intestine, some intestine
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: and some lungs that's in.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: And Morgan said, sometimes that intestine comes home. Yeah, yeah,
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: with this one being here, I wouldn't be surprised. Sometimes
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: you'll see they'll make like a sausage where they'll stuff
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: a lot of things like hot liver, kidneys chopped up
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: into an intestine.
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: H and kind of roast that over a fire.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: Got it.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and uh, Morgan commented on when some intestine was
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: left there. Morgan commented on it, and one of the
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: guys said that he's doing that so that the hyenas
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: will be Yeah.
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he was relieve that for the highness yea.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: But other than that, man that stuff gets eaten down.
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: Absolutely. Yeah.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: The meat recovery here is exceptional, and even all the
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: bones and that'll go into soups and broths.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: What I found was interesting about when we gutted one
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: in the field. So they want the stomach to eat,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: so they dump all the grass clippings out.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: It's just like wet grass, you know.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And it was funny because in the end, you know,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: you work on a carcass in your hands and your
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: tools or get dried blood on them. Yeah, in the end,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: everybody goes up to that stomach contents and use it
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: because it's abrasive.
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, rinse their hands, get everything.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: Clean, get all the tools clean, and then when you
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: run water over.
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: It, just everything's left.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: So yeah, you're like, it's like you come out of
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: the shower.
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely, even so even that gets used for sure. Yeah,
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: it really works. It was cool.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: See Morgan, do you mind asking the guys some of
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: their impressions of like what what they like to work on,
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: what animals they when it comes in They're like, oh, no,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: not one of those, but what might come in they're
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: excited to work on, you know.
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, some some when.
• 15:15
  Speaker 5: I when you're sing easy when you got my cousin.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: He says that he doesn't really have a preference. It's
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: it's work. He takes it all seriously, he takes it
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: all in his stride. It's all the same, you know,
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: even big things like elephants there, they're a challenge, but
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: he he just goes ahead and does his job.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: I would not have answered that that way. I have
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: things and I'm like, oh, not one of those. No.
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: I mean again, you know, it's just it's just a profession.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: These guys have a have a real drive about doing
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: their job welland understand.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: Okay, is anything we.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: Missed or anything you'd like to add about the skinning
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: end of the business.
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: No, I think we've covered it.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: Again, just massive respect for the skills that these guys
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: bring to our company, and we really value their efforts,
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: value their work, and so do our clients because their
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: trophies come home in impeccable condition, and then all the
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: meat that's used in the camp is in great condition too,
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: So it's a it's a serious job back here.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've picked up a few pointers just watching them. Yeah,
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: you know, when you're looking at someone that knows what.
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: They're doing oh for sure, for sure and again basic
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: gear you know, no no havil on knives or any
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: fancy razor blades. They just keep their gear really sharp,
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: really well looked after and know how.
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: To use it.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: One of the things I like is instead of a
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: sharpening steel, you're just do a knife on knife as
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: a steel.
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, knife on knife and then every now and
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: again the stone will come out.
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: Absolutely. Thank you, well done on the sable.