Haha, thanks bro! and good eye. I forgot to mention it was a rattlesnake.
1)After you gut the snake (and this goes for any animal), you need to spread the skin over a long board.
2)At this point, you run a knife, from the head down to the tail, in a scraping motion (you do this on the inner fleshy side). This is to remove any fat or left over meat that stayed stuck on skin when you separated the skin from the innards. You don't need to be 100% perfect. Just do your best and, at the least, remove the majority. This is a very tedious step
3)Next, you wash the skin with warm water (you can use soap as well).
4)After you're done, you take the skin back to the long board, spread it out, and begin putting thumb-tacks or nails all along the outer edges. You need to tack it down with belly side up. This is to keep the skin stretched out during the drying process.
5)Next, you just throw a shit ton of non-iodized salt (AKA pickling salt) onto the skin to dry it out. You need to cover the entire skin with no fleshy part showing.
6) you leave the skin out to dry, for at least a day, until you feel that the skin is completely hardened. The time will vary depending how large the snake is or if you're drying out another animal. Skinning something like deer can take a couple of weeks. For something as small as a snake, you only need to apply one coat of salt. Anything larger, you'll need to remove the salt and re-apply fresh coat.
7) remove/brush away the salt. There will be dry salt spots, left over on the skin, that will not come off by simple brushing motions. Here, you can get a warm wet rag and vigorously wipe away the dried salt. Using a stiff brush will also help.
8) next part, there are a billion methods of doing this and every way is acceptable. However, I don't like using chemicals so I try doing it the old fashion way. After the skin is cleaned from the salt, you just apply a coat of "glycerin," onto the skin, using a paint brush. This is a clear, plant based compound used in moisturizing products. Apply a coat every couple hours until the skin no-longer absorbs the glycerin. wipe away any excess and re-peat on the scale side.
Now, on the part above. As for the snake, I found this to be a good method for "tanning the skin." The skin stay supple and doesn't seem like it'll degrade away years down the road. There is another thing you can do, and what Im about to say is a "must" when dealing with larger animals. This can apply for the snake as well; however, I have yet to try it since I'm very impatient and wanted my snake skin on the quicks.
Back in the day, after the animal was salted, the tanner would keep the brain, of the animal, and use that as a tanning product. Rule of thumb was that the brain of the animal would be the perfect amount of product to use as a tanning solution. They would turn the brain into a paste and wipe a layer onto the skin an leave to dry for days/weeks. You can substitute the brain by using a chicken egg. Just use the yellow yolk (separate from the white) and spread a layer onto the skin. Cover it up with a moist towel and leave to sit. After it dries, wash away the egg and do the glycerin thing I talked about.
This egg paste is suppose to alter the configuration of the skin somehow and allow to stay preserved forever vs how I explained to do the steps I did for my snake skin (ie, not using eggs).
Like I said, there are a lot of ways of doing this. If you ever decide to try this, let me know. I'll give you alternate takes on tanning skins so you can choose what suits you best. You'll be set all the way up to the salting stage, at least. You can leave the skin salted for years, with no damage, and we can go from there.
Im really sorry and it's indeed disrespectful to the animal and to the "real" hunters.
). But out of something bad comes something good. The snake does not go to waste. I do not eat it due to the unknown amount of time it was sitting out in the hot sun, but the snake of the skin is cool to have for a show-piece or to make crafts. Here are a few photos semi-showing the start-to-finish of skinning and tanning a snake.
