Skinning is not entirely reliable.
In every Realm so far, I occasionally have problems skinning a mob.
It is by far most pronounced in Swamps.
I find it helps to move around, gather anything under or next to the mob (rocks, plants, etc) but this does not work all the time.
I circle the mob over and over, head, body, tail, moving across the entire thing, and sometimes get the "noise" with skinning, but see no damage numbers, regardless how much I move around.
As stated earlier, most pronounced in Swamps, where I lose somewhere around 1 in 4 mobs I kill.
It is not a game killer by any means. But it does have an impact.
same thing here, especially with one of the crown mobs
ran into something like this a few times in Magwytch. I couldn't "skin" the animal but my knife attack animation became insanely fast when targeting the "unsinkable" prey.
i would say it happened maybe 1 out of 8 times.