As far as splitting the ears. I don't know if I can explain this without pics on here or not, but we'll give er a shot.
If you look at the coyote face to face, you see the front of the ears. When you split ears what your doing is turning them inside out, but your only seperating the back of the ear skin from the rest of it. The ear nubs that we spoke of will remain attached to the front skin and will be right below it.
You'll have to turn the skin right side out and inside out and back and forth until you get the hang of where your going with your knife. Just keep looking.
With the hide inside out and the ear nubs pointing up, take the best knife you got...I use a scalpel, and slowly cut around the back side of that ear nub. Pull the nub towards the rear of the hide as you go and as it splits you'll be able to see where the skin and the cartalidge meet. That's where you want to cut. You'll only be able to peel what you cut, taking it real slow, and turning the ear inside out as you go. And remember your only working on the back side of the ear. Your seperating it from the front.
Once you get it opened far enough to get a finger or two in, you can force your thumb or finger into it as if you were trying to put on a glove that was way to tight, and open the ear up that way without any more cutting.
Another way is to use a... well lets see...something laying around the house. How bout a broken broom handle? If you take the rounded end of that handle and force it into the ear from the fur side, then turn the hide back so your dealing with the flesh side, and as you push the ear down over that handle you can again run your knife around that line where the skin meets the cartalidge.
You probably won't get them turned inside out and have them come to a perfect point your first couple of time. No big deal, as long as you get it 3/4's of the way split.
Be very carefull using the broom trick as the closer you get to the tip of that ear the thinner the skin gets and it will rip easily.
They make tools for splitting ears and it takes all the work out of it. The one I use looks like a big pair of tongs, but when you squeeze the handles it opens instead of closes. You get the idea. I push that up inside the ear a little at a time and spread them open with a little squeeze as I go.
I hope at least some of that made sense. Let me know if you have any troubles.
Varmints aren't REAL critical, but I still like to turn them. Depending on the tan that you use, tanning them first can actually make splitting thme and removing the cartiladge easier.
I wouldn't go so far as to attempt it on anything larger though /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif
