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

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

Steven Rinella talks with the Senior Skinner of Robin Hurt Safaris.  Topics Discussed: Being in the skinning business for over 35 years; thick and thin hides; a highly skilled trade; and more.  Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Okay everybody, welcome to FWAP 5, Dispatches from Africa. 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. Or no, not that. If you're watching, bear with us when we explain what we're doing as though you're not watching. That make sense? So we're in the skinning area at the camp 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 antelope with, he's got big sweeping like U shaped horns, if you bent the U kind of open, maybe around 40 inch long horns, we're gonna find out. We looked at, how many sable did we look at? Dozens and dozens. Yeah. Literally dozens. And this was the first one that we, the biggest we found and the first one we found

that was like what we were after. Yep. And so we were out in the field, maybe an hour drive, maybe an hour drive from camp. And 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 to around here. Yeah, yeah, we can cut a little makeshift road if we have to. So we were able to get a truck right into where we killed the sable. What would you say the sable was? Yeah, four, five, five, four, five. Yeah, something in that range.

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, but there's nothing to get 30, 40 miles from camp. Oh, it's nothing. Yeah. So if you get something and you want to continue hunting they might skin it and put it in a big bucket of brine. Correct. Yep absolutely. But today we're this is the last thing we're after today 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. Ready, Rick? Rick, practice 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 that it's got great airflow and shade, but stuff can't come around at night and easily get in there and steal everything out of there. So that's a super cool building.

Back over here. Morgan's gonna explain a little bit about the Skinners and these guys like are Skinners. Oh yeah, like that's professional Skinners. It's an occupation. 100%. 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 the Skinner that we have two of them usually in camp 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. You can imagine, um, I don't know,

it's gotta be like low eighties right now. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, so. 83, 84. 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 50s or 60s, occasionally in the 70s. Here it'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 for long periods of time. Oh, 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. Yeah, no, there's like zero smell. No bugs. It tastes wonderful. Yeah, you can just hang it. But the thing they worry about is,

cause 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 I wanted to with this skin, the way I'm getting it taken care of. That, the hair would slip. Yeah, right, absolutely, yeah. 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 they're taking the hide, and they're leaving zero meat, zero fat. They're skinning it so it's coming off clean leather. That's right. Exactly. And they cut.

Like, a lot of times if you're skinning a deer, picture you're skinning a white-tailed deer, in your garage, or whatever, you got it 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. They slice, they don't pull, they slice every, every ounce of skin. Yeah. Is removed, so it's just clean, clean leather. Yep, 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 there, gut juice, whatever will be manually like scraped off. 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. 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. Yep, yep. It's a really cool process. So, can we, I'd like to ask, can you ask a couple of the guys who are skinners, like how long they've been at?

Yeah, yeah. How long they've had the profession? Absolutely. Samani Bwana, Anaswali Kuhusu Kazi Enu, u li fanya Kazi Kamahi Kwa Miaka Ngapi. Absolutely. Samani, I have a question about your work. How long have you been doing this work? 35. 35 years? Yes.

That's great. You've taught many people. Even those who have been to Namibia, South Africa, they have been taught to be able to work. And sometimes, if you don't know how to sew and sew. Sometimes, I have to learn how to sew. I have to learn how to sew and sew. I have to learn how to sew and sew. I have learned how to sew and sew.

I have learned how to sew and sew. I have learned how to sew and sew. I have learned how to sew and sew. I've been teaching them since I was a child. I've been teaching them politics, I've been teaching them in the civil service. I've been doing this for a long time. I'm now teaching them to be a soldier. I'm teaching them to be a soldier. I'm teaching them to be a soldier.

That's very good one. Yeah, so he's been at it for 35 years. He's gone to multiple different countries to learn. Oh, really? South Africa, Namibia. He's also trained people from other places. He's gone to the National Wildlife College to train youth there on the process. And 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 35 years.

That's great. In Tanzania, I'm guessing in many other African countries, to be a skinner in a camp, like a camp skinner, is an occupation that, 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 for sure yeah they can

they can really go into any of these safari camps with a resume like his and the places he's worked and the things he's done. He's a serious professional. I mean, there's no doubt about it. This is a real trade. Can you ask who did he start learning from his dad or start learning from other skinners? You were a young man, you started working here, and where did you learn to come from? I started working in Tanzania, I got a child. I was raised in Kamili, I was raised in Askin, I was raised in Malibu. I was able to work there. I got a certificate to go to Malibu.

I was able to work in Uganda. I went to South Africa to work there. I got a certificate to go to Prusu to work in Malibu. Very nice. Thank you. So he actually went to the National Wildlife College to study there. He didn't come up to the trade learning from any particular individual. He pursued it. And then he went to Uganda and South Africa to really hone his craft. Okay, great. So that's how the skin works. The skull, like the skin 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. Yeah. And then it's shelf stable. Yep, correct. The skull, they'll clean it up pretty good and they'll pack it. If you look down there, we have a warthog skull laying down there.

They'll pack it in salt just to dry it out so zero flies on it, zero odor. And that can be taken care of later. Then the meat's 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. But we, every night, me, 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 around 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, hands, whatever. And what's not gonna get used immediately gets cut into drying strips to make like a, there's some that's brined and made in like biltongue and some is just flat out dried. 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 in his little neighborhood, brought back like a sack of the dried meat, which is rehydrated. So picture that you're cutting meat is kind of like, I'm trying to think what would be the size of how you describe the size of the strip. Yeah, it's sort of 12, 8 to 12 inches long, potentially a little longer inch by inch square.

Yeah, inch by inch square. Exactly. And they hang it up. It's not seasoned, 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. Yeah. That meat, they cut up and just rehydrate it and cook it down, boil it, whatever, until it kind of comes back to life. It's pretty damn good. Yeah, it's really good. We ate it the other day. It was delicious. So it can't be used, what's not used fresh is dried like that.

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. Yeah, yeah, there was a lot of energy getting it prepared before it goes bad

so they can have their start building up their stash to take back to the village at the end of the season or throughout the season depending on where they live. Yeah. Um, the tail. A lot of these animals on like in the US a lot of these animals have a big tail. Yep. So we had like an oxtail soup off a buffalo tail on this is pretty small, but there's some pieces on there. Liver, we see that get consumed.

We've eaten and watched guys eat heart. Yep. 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. Yep. That becomes a soup or a stew.

When we left, like one carcass that we did in the field, we cut it up in the field. When we left, there was the stomach contents laying there and some intestine. Some intestine and some lungs. That's it. Yeah. 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 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 heart liver Kidneys chopped up into an intestine. Mm-hmm and kind of roast that over a fire. Got it. Yeah

And Morgan commented on when some intestine was left there Morgan commented on it and one of the guys said that um He's doing that so the hyenas will be yeah. Yeah, was like, we'll leave that for the hyenas. Yeah. But other than that, man, that stuff gets eaten down. Absolutely. Yeah, the meat recovery here is exceptional. And even all the bones and that'll go into soups and broths. 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.

And it's just like wet grass, you know? Yeah. And it was funny, because in the end, you work on a carcass and your tools get dried blood on them. Yeah. In the end, everybody goes up to that stomach contents and use it because it's abrasive. Yeah, rinse the hands, rinse the tools. Get everything clean, get all the tools clean.

And then when you run water over it, just, pssh. Yeah, everything sloughs off. Yeah, yeah, it's like you come out of the shower. Yeah, absolutely. So even that gets used. For sure, yeah, it really works. That was cool, see. Morgan, do you mind asking the guys some of their impressions of like what they like to work on, what animals they, when it comes in, they're like, I don't know, not one of those. What might come in, they're excited to work on, you know? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Samani, you can say it again, please.

Because it's work. We've been working on it for a long time. We're not just working on it. Because it's something that we're not just working on. Even if you're not working on it, you know where you're going, where you're going. Because those animals are like animals. He says that he doesn't really have a preference. Oh, yeah? It's work.

He takes it all seriously. He takes it all in his stride. It's all the same. Even big things like elephants, they're a challenge, but he just goes ahead and does his job. Got it. I would not have answered that that way. I have things and I'm like, oh, not one of those.

Yeah. No, I mean, again, it's just testing the profession. Yeah, no, I got you. These guys have a real drive about doing their job well. I understand. I understand. Okay, is there anything we missed or anything you'd like to add about the skinning end of the business? No, I think we've covered it. 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 serious job back here. Yeah, I've picked up a few pointers just watching them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know when you're looking at someone that knows what they're doing. Oh, for sure, for sure.

And again, basic gear, you know? No have-a-lon knives or any fancy razor blades. They just keep their gear really sharp, really well looked after, and know how to use it. One of the things I like is instead of a sharpening steel, you're just doing knife on knife as a steel. Yeah, exactly, knife on knife, and then every now and again the stone will come out. Thank you, man. Absolutely, thank you.

Well done on the sable.