What are the pros and cons of skinning an animal in RDR2

Solution 1:

I've played enough to complete the story and side missions. Personally, I always skin them if I want the items. Here are the differences as I understand it:

Skinning carcasses

• You can store more skins on your horse than carcasses. When you stow a carcass you have one 'large' slot on the back of your horse and one 'medium' slot on either side of the horse, whereas multiple skins can be stacked up on the back of the horse (the exception being very large pelts which must be stowed in the large space).
• You store some of the meat and the other items (horns, feathers, etc) in your satchel right away.
• Some animals are too large to stow, and have to be skinned to get their parts.

Unskinned carcasses

• Unskinned carcasses give more meat overall when sold or donated to camp (If you skin bigger animals you usually get a message saying you couldn't carry everything).
• They are worth more money when sold, compared to the value of the pelt/meats when skinned.
• Not skinning them means you can avoid sitting through the skinning animation (approximately 3-10 seconds depending on the size of the animal)

Here is a pretty good article with more details