How to skin a turkey

When preparing your turkey for the pot, you can either skin it or pluck it. Because wild turkeys have such thin skin, many hunters prefer skinning their turkeys as it’s must faster than plucking the bird.

Pick up where you left off gutting the bird

Simply continue making the cut in the skin from the body cavity, all the way up the breast bone to the base of the neck. The skin is thin enough that you often can peel it free from the breast meat. Slide your thumbs under the skin and working it up and away from the keel, or breastbone, to the base of the neck. Continue peeling the skin down the sides of each breast, all the way to the wings.

Remove the wings

If you want to remove the wings and haven’t already, use a knife to sever them at the wrist or shoulder joint. Don’t try to break the wings off. The bones are hollow and fragment easily. These sharp, small bone fragments can make handling and cooking a turkey dangerous. So if your bird has a broken wing or leg bone, be sure to remove all fragments during the cleaning and prepping process.

Continue peeling the skin off the carcass, working your way around the back and tail section. Peel the skin down each leg -- imagine unrolling a sock -- and sever each leg at the knee joint.

Work around the tail up to the neck

To get around the tail, you’ll need to severe the joint at the base of the spine. This also will keep the entire tail intact if you’d like to save it as a memento, or fan it out to use on a turkey decoy in a future hunt.

Now that the skin is loose from the legs, back and breast, work it around the shoulders, all the way to the neck. Sever the neck about one inch from the body, and you have a whole, skinned turkey ready to cook or further breakdown.

Skin a turkey only if you can refrigerate it or get it on ice immediately. While skinning a turkey is much faster than plucking one, don’t age skinned birds under refrigeration for more than a day or two because they will dry out without the protective layer of skin.