Do you tan your hides?

[joshbazz]

I'm heading out tomorrow with my brother to see if we can harvest a couple of the 2 point mule deer we saw 3 weeks ago over our opening day, 4 day Muley hunt. We covered a lot of ground, and have a good idea of where they go, so we're hopeful. One thing I don't see talked about much here is preserving the deer hide. I'd like to use as much of the animal as possible, and I think having deer hides would be pretty cool for rugs or blankets, if done right.

Does anybody here do it themselves? Or do you send it to a tanner?

If so, what is the process that you do once you take down the deer; do you skin and remove as much fat/meat off the hide right away, or just roll it up and do it later.

Sorry for the newbie question, just putting positive vibes out there that we'll have success, not trying to count chickens before they hatch :)

Thank you,

Josh

[Kill-da-wabbit]

The first one I did, I stretched the hide out on a piece of plywood and stapled it in place. Scraped it as best I could at the time, and salted it to dry. I could then take my time researching methods and products without taking up freezer space. It's not hard to, but a lot of work for a quality product. There are lots of videos on Youtube. Start with the scraping, stretch and salt. Then you can pick the best method for the resources you have available.

[Squamch]

I had a few done. Cats hated em and ruined them, never really had any use for it anyway. They're gone in a week along with the rest of the gut pile if you leave em in the woods.

[chele]

I did my first one. It is a time consuming process and I couldn’t find a better use than a mat in the garage. Besides, you also have to make sure you kill the ticks in the hide before you start cleaning it. Bring a large plastic bag if you choose to bring the hide back with you and fumigate the hide before taking it out.

[joshbazz]

Wow, sounds like this might be more trouble than it's worth. I mean, I want to use as much of the animal as possible, but if it gets consumed/disintegrated along with the gut pile, I guess it's just going back to nature...