sculp v also scalp, skulp OED ~ v2 (Nfld: 1840-), DC Nfld (1832-) for sense 1.
1 To cut the skin and attached blubber from a harp or hooded seal; flense; PELT v.
1819 ANSPACH 427 It has been said that the seals are generally sculped at sea; but sometimes. from want of leisure, stress of weather, or some damage received by the vessel, this operation of sculping, or separating the pelt from the carcase, is performed on land. 1832 MCGREGOR i, 224 But the weather often is such as to leave no time to scalp the seals on the ice. and the carcasses are then carried whole to the vessel. [1844] GOSSE 113 As soon as a Seal is killed ... a circular cut is made with a sharp knife around the neck, and a longitudinal one down the belly to the tail: the skin with the surface fat is then 'scalped' off, forming altogether 'a pelt.' [1870] 1899 Nfld Law Reports 327 Plaintiffs' crew killed, as they computed, about 3,000 seals, of which some were scalped and ed, some were cut open, and others were left round. [1896] SWANSBOROUGH 33 "The Seal Fishery": Then with his knife from nose to stern, / He sculps it, this as you must learn / Is to cut the fat from the flesh. 1911 LINDSAY 50 He would pull them together [seals which had been killed] and sculp them, that is, with his sculping knife he would make an incision on the under surface of the body, its entire length, through the skin and fat ... with a very few sweeps of the knife the body was separated and thrown away. T 23-64 Cut un abroad, and sculp un—take the pelt off of un—and leave the carcass. 1976 Evening Telegram 19 Mar, p. 6 It makes my 'townie' blood boil to hear people talk about skinning seals. You don't skin a seal, you sculp them! You take the seal's pelt, fat, and hide off. Of all the seals that were killed there wasn't one skinned out to the ice. They were all skinned when they were landed on Bowring's wharf or Job's and hoisted up to the skinning loft.
2 To skin and quarter a beaver or deer.
1872 HOWLEY MS Reminiscences 6 Having first sculped the [beaver] in a somewhat similar manner to sculping a seal, except that instead of merely taking off the skin and fat, he took the flesh with the skin, cutting right into the bone. T 208/9-65 An' while [the moose] was hot we sculped un, all we could get off of un, an' we shared it when we got out here, myself an' my buddy, an' we had six hundred pound o' meat.
3 To cut off the fleshy parts of a cod's head.
1934 Nfld Qtly Apr, p. 12 "Jenkins the Fisherman": Cut out the tongues from the heads of the fishes, / Or sculp out the cod-heads. 1975 The Rounder Sep, p. 12 A woman on the South Coast is reputed to have been able to 'skulp a head' with her two thumbs but it is much easier to do it with a knife.
