Can an educated hunter please inform us on preparing a pelt. I am wanting to make use of the pelts that I collect this year. Rather than throwing them away, I would like to perpare them and give them as gifts or sell them at the farmers market. Can anyone describe a few steps?

It is messy, smelly, and time consuming. It is hard to get the quality of a commercial tan at home.

I do not want to write a long article on home tanning. You can go on-line and ask “How to Tan a skin.”

There are a lot of Taxidermy Suppliers out there that you can buy tanning supplies from.

But here are some of the steps to tan a hide.

1.)     Fleshing the hide

2.)     Salting the hide

3.)     Acid pickle of the hide

4.)     Neutralizing of the Acid pickle

5.)     Degreasing of the hide (For greasy skins such as Beavers, Raccoons, and Muskrats etc.)

6.)     Tanning of the hide ( Adding tanning agents to the skin )

7.)     Softening of the hide (For skins to be used as rugs or pelts.)
You might want to also ask on the taxidermy forum to.

Sorry I had to step away from my computer for a little while. And I guess I really did not answer your question.

I take it to that you are asking about tanning a pelt, and not just having a raw, or salt dried skin.

What I was getting at was most taxidermist skin out the animal, flesh out the head, feet, tail, and the rest of the pelt. Salt it down and send it out to be tanned at a commercial tannery. This is because it doesn’t really cost that much to tan a hide, and the commercial tannery produces a really nice soft tanned skin.  If you do it yourself there are a lot of steps involved in turning a raw skin into soft leather. And like I said it is too lengthy of a process to write about here. Look it up online and they will have all of the steps and how to do it.

Tmaylem,
Tanned skins also make a nice mount, this is one that I did.

cshep,

That's pretty straight forward.

Great lookin' mount also........................you do nice work !

I did some deer hides with stuff called CURATAN. I had to flesh out the one side, follow the instructions that come with the product, and then you apply the Curatan to the flesh side. I did two coats actually. The hides held up real well and we used that as decorative floor rugs in the office for a while. Then they were moved outside to the deck/porch area around the deck furniture for a while. And from there I really don't know what happened to them. Although, after several years I did note that some of the hair was starting to slip. But these hides took some real abuse. So overall I was pleased with the job and they were nice and soft.

cshep, I'm with scowling, you do nice work.