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