Furbearer Tanning/Taxidermy Graphic Images

[StraightShooter]

I've tanned quite a few furs in my day and have found stuff that works really well and have ruined some furs along the way as well. I just got some new fur stretchers in today and figured I would show you guys how I tan my furs.

First you need to kill something! This method I'll describe below works well for any medium sized fur bearer (fox, coyote, bobcat, etc). I headed out this evening and shot a decent sized female gray fox.




If the temperature is over 50 degrees F and you are going to take longer than 2 hours to get home and skin the animal you run the risk of the hair slipping(falling out). So if you're planning on pulling an all nighter and want to make sure the fur stays good, you will need to take some non-iodized salt with you and you will have to skin out the animal in the field and rub salt into the flesh side of the hide as you skin it out. For this one, I just went home afterwards and skinned it out in the garage.

The way I skin out almost all my furs is by "case skinning" where you make an incision all the way around the anus and then up along the back side of each rear leg where there is a color transition line on the fur. I cut the fur around the ankles on all four legs as well (See Pic Below).

Note: If you are skinning an animal for a full mount you will need to skin out the feet and pull the toes. You will also want to use a dorsal cut method instead of case skinning. That is a whole other topic I wont go into right now.


Notice the fur on the feet still attached.


Skinning the body:
Once you make the incision around the anus and up the back of the two rear legs, you literally just pull the fur over the animal like you are taking off a sock. You typically only need to use your knife very little until you get to the front shoulder area. You want to pull the skin away by forcing your hand in between the body and the skin. Before you get to the shoulders though you will have to pull the tail. To get the tail out of the fur you want to carefully cut and pull the fur down the tail only about an inch. Once you get an inch of the tail skinned you can either use your fingernails and pull firmly and the tail should slip out or the easier way is to use a tail stripper that you can buy at any taxidermist supply site. I usually always just carefully do it with my finger nails. You DO NOT want to let the tail roll over itself (i.e. turn inside out like a sock). It will either tear in half midway down or you will have a hell of a time getting it from inside out back to normal.

Continue pulling the fur away down the body till you get to the front shoulder. You will need to use your knife a bit to skin out the armpits. You then pull the front legs out of the fur and it detaches where the cuts were made previously around the ankles.




Skinning the Head/Mouth/Ears:
Once the front legs are out you continue to pull the fur down and carefully use your knife in areas where it is not separating easily. The first thing you will come to are the ear cartilage. You will need to cut the cartilage off flush to the skull. Continue pulling and gently cutting till you get to the eyes. VERY CAREFULLY cut along the inside of the eyelids to release the fur from the eyelids. This is a delicate process so take your time. You can then begin to separate the fur from the mouth by cutting along the gum line. Lastly you will come to the nose where you cut straight down through the nose cartilage as the final step in releasing the fur from the body. At this point you can either freeze the hide for tanning later or tan it right away.

[StraightShooter]

Tanning the hide:
There are probably a million ways to tan furs (brain tanning, salting and drying, etc) and this is just one way that I have found works best for me. The stuff I use is called Krowtann 2000 and I get it from Van Dyke's taxidermy online. What's nice about this solution is that salting the hide before hand is not necessary and only a rough fleshing needs to be done before. Fleshing is important, especially if your skinning skills are less than ideal and you have left meat attached to your hide. Before you tan the hide you need to get all of the large meat pieces off the flesh. If they are left on, the fur will slip in these spots because the tanning solution cannot get deep enough into the follicles on the flesh side. I use a small fleshing tool to do this rough fleshing if it is necessary.


Rubbing salt into the flesh before hand can help you get it off a little easier. Al lot of times though, if you skinned it cleanly, no fleshing is needed before going into the tan.


My tanning solution recipe is the following:
8oz Krowtann 2000
4 LBS pickling salt (you can buy 36 pounds of salt from amazon prime with free shipping for $9 )
2.5 Gallons of water.

Mix solution in a 5 gallon bucket. Try not to breathe the stuff because it is pretty potent. Wearing gloves is a good idea too.

Place the hide in the tan flesh side out and squeeze out any air pockets in the fur/skin. Use a 1 gallon filled water jug to weigh down the fur in the solution. You don't want any part of the hide exposed to air or it will ruin it.


Tanning takes between 1-4 days and every day (more than once a day is best) you need to lift the hide out and reposition it to make sure the solution gets to all parts of the hide. Once the fleshy side is white in color, the tanning is done. You now need to neutralize the tanning solution on the hide.

Neutralizing the tan and washing the hide:
At this point you want to actually stop the tanning process by neutralizing the solution on the hide (don't neutralize the solution in your tanning bucket, it can be reused on other hides). To neutralize the hide, rinse it out first with clear water. Then put the hide in a separate bucket with two gallons of water and 6 oz of baking soda. The hide should stay in this solution for 15 minutes and you should agitate it every five minutes. Once this is done, rinse it again and you can now wither shampoo the fur or wash it in dawn dish soap to make it soft and smell clean. Wring out as much water as you can and stretch the fur over a fur stretcher to dry completely. Fur stretchers can be bought at taxidermy supply places for only a few dollars a piece or you can make your own.

[StraightShooter]

Alrighty, so once the pelt has been neutralized in baking soda you want to wash it with either shampoo or laundry detergent. I use liquid tide. Rinse it thoroughly in clear water and then wring it out as much as possible. Once it is wrung out, stretch it on a fur stretcher skin side in and hang it to partially dry. Usually I will put it on the stretcher at night and will let it sit overnight and then the whole next day before I work on it again. You want it to be moist when you begin to work on it again. If its too wet or if its too dry it is hard to finish flesh. If it dries too much just rub some water on the skin side.

Picture shows hide on stretcher with an unused stretcher around it for reference.


Now the real work begins!! Finish fleshing is very important if you want a really soft and supple hide. If you don't finish flesh it well, the hide will dry very hard and it will shrink like crazy. I use a small hand flesher to do almost all the fleshing. Everything below the front two shoulders fleshes really easily. The neck area and face area take much more time to do properly and you need to be more careful to not poke holes in the fur.

With the hide slightly moist, use a fleshing tool to scrape any flesh or membrane off of the hide. If you see hair follicles then you don't want to go any farther.

This picture shows what fleshed hide looks like compared to unfleshed hide.


In the neck and head areas I work the hide over a cable stretched between my work benches. This quickly loosens the membrane from the hide and allows for easier removal.



Carefully flesh the entire face and neck area. Now you want to carefully remove the ear cartilage. The easiest way to do this is to press your thumb in between the skin of the ear and cartilage slowly separating them. Once you get the main cartilage area separated, cut if off with a knife. Make sure you flesh thinly all of the areas around the lips and eyes as well.

it should look something like this:



Now the hide is beginning to dry out and to prevent the hide from shrinking, you want to stretch it while it dries. To do this, put it back on the stretcher skin side out this time. Once it has dried, I rub a light coat of 100% peanut oil into the skin. This helps to keep the skin soft and supple. The last step I do is work the skin side over a cable one last time to really work in the oil. Pull the hide fur side out and you should now have a very soft and flexible fully tanned fur! If the fur is matted or not fluffy, brush it while blow drying it.

[Bowhunter_619]

Great thread SS. Nice job on the fox also. Standing by for the rest of the process.

[Ninask]

Great refresher-thanx
N

[Flowmini98]

Very cool. Thank you for the info

[mofugly13]

Cool. Thanks for taking the time to do this.

[taperxz]

Great information

Sticky time.

[Changalang]

thanks for a great writeup!

[xtra870]

Sweet now I don't have to pay 40 bucks a coon!!! Thank you!!!!

[StraightShooter]

Originally Posted by xtra870

Sweet now I don't have to pay 40 bucks a coon!!! Thank you!!!!

Coons are fatty and greasy. If you're goin to use krowtann on a coon I highly recommend you salt it heavily and flesh it thoroughly before you tan it.

[pieeater]

Great thread thanks for taking the time to do this.

[Thomas83]

Originally Posted by pieeater

Great thread thanks for taking the time to do this.

Ditto, much appreciated!


Sent from the Tardis using Taptalk

[Shoot-it]

Great write up.I like to de -flesh before tanning .
A cheap way to get by with out buying a scraper is using a hack saw blade just bend it in a U works pretty good.

[Manolito]

Thank you for the information next winter I am going to try a coyote.

[Ninask]

Great thread good reading
Have you ever tried tanning a badger?
the fat seems impossible to remove from the hide on this critter for some reason
N

[incredablehefey]

Great thread, thank you for taking the time to do this.

Is it possible to over tan the hide? Or would it be feasible to leave the hide (or 2) submerged in a sealed bucket for the trip home?

[aaronraby1]

I recommend a tail stripper.

[aaronraby1]

Originally Posted by xtra870

Sweet now I don't have to pay 40 bucks a coon!!! Thank you!!!!

wow... that's ridiculous... I recommend you stop going to wherever is charging you that much.

[aaronraby1]

Originally Posted by Ninask

Great thread good reading
Have you ever tried tanning a badger?
the fat seems impossible to remove from the hide on this critter for some reason
N

fleshing beams work great.

[Mesa Defense]

Whoa, who's that guy?????

[Tanner68]

Thanks StraightShooter. Great post!

[BigPimping]

Very cool post on a lost art.

[Woody13]

Thanks this was a grwat read and a lot of cool info.

[G38xOC]

I definitely will try this method out . thanks

[Whacked]

Any other alternative to peanut oil?

[Don@Tahoe]

I'm going to tan a Beaver pelt, do you have any advice or direction for Beaver?
Also, where can I find a stretching tool like you have?

[Oger2]

Originally Posted by Don@Tahoe

I'm going to tan a Beaver pelt, do you have any advice or direction for Beaver?
Also, where can I find a stretching tool like you have?

Breath on it hard, hot and heavy. If you want to stretch it? You will need to mic the width of, well, you know.

[StraightShooter]

Originally Posted by Whacked

Any other alternative to peanut oil?

I used baseball glove conditioner once which worked ok. Peanut oil is nice and light and doesn't smell so that's why it is a good choice.

[StraightShooter]

Originally Posted by Don@Tahoe

I'm going to tan a Beaver pelt, do you have any advice or direction for Beaver?
Also, where can I find a stretching tool like you have?

Beaver would be done essentially the same way in terms of tanning. You need to flesh it pretty thoroughly before tanning though because they are fatty and the tan won't penetrate deep enough if there is fat still on it and the hair will slip. Beaver is usually stretched on round stretchers versus those longer wire ones I use for fox and coyotes. I buy stretchers at bass pro, cabelas, or van dykes taxidermy. I'm headed to Texas next week to eradicate the beavers that are destroying the dams on my lakes. If I can I'll try and do a write up on tanning the beaver.

[Don@Tahoe]

Originally Posted by StraightShooter

Beaver would be done essentially the same way in terms of tanning. You need to flesh it pretty thoroughly before tanning though because they are fatty and the tan won't penetrate deep enough if there is fat still on it and the hair will slip. Beaver is usually stretched on round stretchers versus those longer wire ones I use for fox and coyotes. I buy stretchers at bass pro, cabelas, or van dykes taxidermy. I'm headed to Texas next week to eradicate the beavers that are destroying the dams on my lakes. If I can I'll try and do a write up on tanning the beaver.

That would be great! The hide is frozen solid right now, the Beaver was killed by another Beaver dropping an Aspen tree on him, big boy too, 70lbs, I have everything ordered but the round wire stretchers, I'll go ahead and do that, thanks for all the info and direction, great job on this sticky!

[StraightShooter]

Originally Posted by Don@Tahoe

That would be great! The hide is frozen solid right now, the Beaver was killed by another Beaver dropping an Aspen tree on him, big boy too, 70lbs, I have everything ordered but the round wire stretchers, I'll go ahead and do that, thanks for all the info and direction, great job on this sticky!

Holy cow! That's one huge and unlucky beaver! Lol. Most I get are between 10 and 40 lbs. If I don't retrieve them immediately the damn turtles eat the fur off of them. Pretty gross.

[Don@Tahoe]

Wow, I've never seen anything like that!
A friend of mine builds boat docks up here and the Beavers keep him busy, we counted 16 the other day. Been seeing several DFG trucks lately which is really unusual, haven't had any contact with them but, we think they are going to start taking them out because all the damage they are causing.

[Whacked]

Originally Posted by StraightShooter

I used baseball glove conditioner once which worked ok. Peanut oil is nice and light and doesn't smell so that's why it is a good choice.

Hmmm, i can imagine glove conditioner is more $$
I asked about alternatives because I cannot handle peanuts. Not allergic per say but the smell alone makes me very nauseous and has induced vomiting. Not pleasant so I avoid it.

[Don@Tahoe]

Started the beaver pelt today, soaking in the solution now, will stir every day and pull out Saturday....

[DSMeyer]

Originally Posted by Don@Tahoe

Started the beaver pelt today, soaking in the solution now, will stir every day and pull out Saturday....

There's a dirty joke in there somewhere

Looking forward to the pictures.

[StraightShooter]

Originally Posted by Don@Tahoe

Started the beaver pelt today, soaking in the solution now, will stir every day and pull out Saturday....

Nice, I hope it turns out well for you! I got a few beaver and an otter in Texas but ended up giving them to a trapper instead of hauling them all the way home to skin and tan. That solution is pretty potent, try not to breathe it too much. Also make sure nothing is exposed to air and everything is completely submerged or the hair will slip.

[Don@Tahoe]

Haha DSMeyer, I can only imagine!
Thanks SS, I caught a couple light whiffs, that's some strong stuff, I'll post pictures...

[CSACANNONEER]

Originally Posted by DSMeyer

There's a dirty joke in there somewhere

Looking forward to the pictures.

You know that you're asking him to post pics of a furry beaver, don't you?

[DSMeyer]

Originally Posted by CSACANNONEER

You know that you're asking him to post pics of a furry beaver, don't you?

Hey the late 70's and mid 80's were good times!