In Western Wisconsin, writer Michael Perry is getting ready for hunting season — in his own way. He showed us a contraption he made for preparing deer.
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Over here, you can see this homemade deer skinning device. This is one of the few things that I made and designed that worked out pretty good.
It’s made out of a ratchet from a boat trailer. You know, you see people hauling their boats in from the water, I use that ratchet.
Then I bought some cable and a couple of pulleys. And then that’s called a snatch block arrangement where it goes up to the rafters and back over the two pulleys.
And then what you do is you get your deer out here and you hook the deer to the pulley and then you raise the pulley.
When he gets to a certain height, you start skinning the deer with your knife. And then once you get the skinning started, you take this vise grip and you just clip it onto the hide and you hook the chain to the frame, which is immovable, and then you hook the chain through the wrench that’s attached to the deer hide. Turn this ratchet and it lifts the deer up and it just pulls the hide right off.
So that’s redneck engineering at its finest, if I do say so myself (laughing).
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Editor’s Note: This feature was included in a broadcast story that aired on February 3, 2021 celebrating the 10 year anniversary of “Wisconsin Life” on Wisconsin Public Radio.
Todd Witter, co-founder of “Wisconsin Life” and current Assistant Program Director at Oregon Public Broadcasting, wanted to share a pair of short stories he created on two quintessential Wisconsin activities: deer hunting with Michael Perry and Friday night fish fry at Maricque’s in Green Bay.
