Rabbits skin like wet paper and squirrels fight like duct tape

Quick answer: A rabbit's hide tears so easily you can skin it with your fingers in under a minute. A squirrel's hide is tough and clings, so you cut under the tail, step on it, and pull. Wear gloves for both, gut them fast, and get the meat cold.

Most people learn one of these animals first and then treat the other one the same way. That's where the trouble starts. Try to peel a squirrel like a rabbit and you'll be at it for ten minutes with fur stuck to everything. Treat a rabbit like a squirrel and you'll shred the hide into confetti and leave half of it on the meat.

So learn them as two different jobs. The tools are the same. The technique isn't.

The kit fits in a bread bag

You don't need a skinning station. You need:

• A small, sharp knife. A 3-inch blade is plenty, and anything bigger just gets in the way.
• Poultry shears or game shears for feet, heads and the pelvis.
• Nitrile gloves, several pairs.
• A gallon jug of water, or a creek.
• Zip-top bags and a cooler with ice.

If you're still figuring out what rides in the pack and what stays in the truck, this rundown on knives, saws and pack weight covers it.

The gloves aren't optional, and they aren't about squeamishness. Rabbits, hares and squirrels can carry tularemia, a bacterial infection people catch by handling infected animals, especially through small cuts on the hands. The CDC's advice to hunters is plain: wear gloves when you dress them and cook the meat all the way through. A rabbit that's sluggish, easy to walk up on, or acting strange is one to leave alone.

Rabbits: thirty seconds and no knife

Turn the rabbit on its belly. Pinch a fold of skin in the middle of its back and pull it up into a tent.

Make one small cut across that fold, about an inch long. If your knife is sharp, the snip is enough. Some guys just tear it with their fingers.

Now hook two fingers from each hand into the slit. Pull one hand toward the head and one toward the tail. The hide comes apart like wet paper towel. Keep going until the front half is bunched at the neck and the back half is bunched at the hind feet.

Push each leg out of its skin the way you'd pull a kid's arm out of a sweater. Clip the feet off at the joint with the shears. Clip the head. The whole hide comes off in two pieces, and you never touched the meat with a blade.

The annoying part is that rabbit skin is so thin it tears where you don't want it to, and little patches of fur stay stuck on the hams. Pick them off now, while you can see them. They don't come off easier later.

Squirrels: cut, step, pull

Squirrel hide is thick and anchored to the body like it's glued. You beat it with leverage, not finesse.

Wet the squirrel first. Dunk it in water or pour some over it. Wet fur clumps instead of floating, and floating squirrel hair is the single biggest complaint anybody has about squirrel meat. Thirty seconds of wetting saves you twenty minutes of picking.

Lay it belly down and lift the tail. Cut through the underside of the tail at the base, right through the tailbone, but stop before you cut through the skin on top of the tail. You want the tail still attached to the hide on the back.

Extend the cut an inch or so out along each side of the lower back, through the skin only, so there's a little flap of hide hanging off the tail.

Lay the squirrel on the ground. Put your boot on the tail. Grab both hind legs and pull up, slow and steady.

The hide peels forward toward the head like a sock coming off. What stays behind is a pair of "pants" on the hind legs. Work your fingers under that skin and strip it down to the ankles. Clip the feet, clip the front feet, clip the head, and the hide comes away in one piece.

Your first squirrel will take a while. By the fifth you'll be under two minutes. Older squirrels are noticeably tougher to pull, and a big fox squirrel late in the season can make you work for it. That's normal. Pull harder, not faster.

The warbles. Early in the season, you'll sometimes find a lump under the skin with a fat grub inside it. That's a botfly larva. It lives in the skin, not the meat. Toss the hide, trim any discolored spot, and the squirrel is fine to eat. Plenty of hunters wait until after a few hard frosts to start, partly for this reason.

Gutting both of them the same way

Once the hide's off, gutting is identical.

Pinch the belly skin just above the pelvis and lift it away from the guts. Make a shallow cut and run your blade up toward the ribcage with the edge facing up, your finger guiding underneath. You're cutting the belly wall, not anything inside it. Nick the intestines or the bladder and you've got a mess to rinse.

Split the pelvis with the shears so the lower intestine and bladder come out clean. Then reach up past the ribs, grab the heart and lungs, and pull everything out in one handful.

Look at the liver, especially on a rabbit. It should be smooth and evenly dark red. A liver speckled with small white or yellow spots is a classic warning sign of tularemia. If you see that, don't eat the animal. Bag it, wash up well, and don't feel bad about it.

Rinse the cavity. Trim the bloodshot meat around any wound. If you shot it with a shotgun, run your fingers over the meat for pellets, and know you'll still miss one. That's why a well-placed .22 on squirrels is so popular, and why being sure of the shot matters on a three-pound animal as much as it does on a deer.

Field or home, warm or cold

Skin and gut in the field if it's warm out. Guts spoil meat fast, and a squirrel riding in a vest pocket for four hours on a 70-degree September morning isn't going to taste good. If you're hunting alone and want a cleaner system for that, the field dressing piece applies at a smaller scale.

On a cold day, a lot of hunters gut in the field and skin at home on the tailgate. That's a fair trade. Warm animals skin easier, but you've got water, light and a cooler at the truck.

Either way, the meat goes on ice and stays below 40 degrees. A gallon bag per two or three animals keeps things tidy.

What to do with it

Plenty of people soak small game overnight in the fridge in salted water. It pulls some blood out and seasons the meat a little. It isn't required, but it doesn't hurt.

Young squirrels and young rabbits fry beautifully. Old ones don't. An old squirrel fried in a skillet will chew like a fan belt. Braise it instead, low and covered for two or three hours, until the meat falls off those little bones. Pull it, and it makes a better gravy or dumpling dish than anything you'll buy.

Rabbit is lean, so it dries out if you leave it in the pan too long. Cook either one all the way through, to 165°F on a thermometer.

The rules and the manners

Small game regulations change a lot from state to state, and sometimes county to county. Season dates, daily bag limits, whether you need hunter orange, which license covers you, whether a rabbit and a hare count as the same species: all of it varies. Some states have wanton waste laws that make leaving edible small game in the field a violation. Read your state wildlife agency's regulation book before opening day, not in the truck.

Bury the guts or scatter them well off any trail, and pack out your gloves and bags. If somebody let you hunt their ground, and that's how most people get their first spot, bring them a bag of clean, cold, hair-free squirrel at the end of the season. Nothing gets you invited back faster.

And don't hand anybody a squirrel with fur still on it. They'll remember that too.