Otter pelt

Well of all things, I never expected to catch an otter in my snares! It tangled up the snare so bad that the individual wires came loose on the strand. I had to cut the snare off of it because it was so tangled up in the brush.
Well worth it! Apparently otters transverse the raccoon trails.

Today was a REALLY good day. Started off going to garage sales, figured we'd stop at Tractor Supply to get a cage trap for me. Guess. What. A nice man had two cage traps in his garage, and took $10 for both. They're the green tractor supply kind, but not bad condition! One is a large raccoon trap, and the other is a squirrel trap.
Then right after, found a roadkill raccoon in GREAT condition. The buzzards had only opened up his backside, and he was still warm. Went to the flea market and bought a few new tails(one of which is for sale/trade, a sleek burgundy. ask if interested)

Came home and figured I needed to skin the raccoon right away and might as well check the snares while I was at it. Nothing in the bobcat snare, nothing in the snare I caught the opossum in, then I saw this dark... lump next to where my coon trail snare was. Figured out it was an otter, and went out to grab it right away. Was still warm as well. Took me all afternoon and most of the evening to skin the bugger because I've never skinned an otter and wow they have some weird anatomy...

This nice little otter is 26 3/4 long NTB(I have the rest of her measurements) and weighed 14 pounds. The raccoon only weighed 7. It was hell skinning it, and I *think* it's female. There were no testicles, so. Case skinned for taxidermy, nose split, lips split, extra eye skin, paws skinned out. NOT fleshed(I couldn't properly flesh her with my setup now, so I'd rather pay extra for a tannery to do so than mess her pelt up.)