The Hair on Winter (sleeping in hair on hides, in winter, in place of a sleeping bag)

If you have a moose hide and or deer hide with the full hair, consider turning it into sleep gear. Wrap yourself lengthwise with the hair out on warm nights and fur turned in on snowy cold nights. First, lay a cloth down over a bed of sticks or other dry bramble taking care to avoid material that will puncture your hide; this bed will keep your hide clean and you off the icy ground. Brush most of the snow aside first.

You'll need something extra to wrap around your exposed feet and shins. Rubber soled boots will not do—your feet will freeze; the material must breath. A few wool socks and some wool sweaters will.

The moose hide I use came from a winter coat yearling that was hit, so I had to use a haired buck to wrap my front (sleeping on your back). Do what I call “the swaddle”. Put the deer hide on your chest first, then laying on the moose hide, wrap its sides around you and the deer hide. The hides should have the necks at your feet and rumps near your head. 

To be really comfortable in sub zero temperature you will need two deer hides for the front.

A trick is to wrap the rump and hind legs off your moose hide mattress up and over your shoulders and use long thongs , woven through the holes that border your hide to sintch and hold the whole bundle together. Make sure that if the hide is not strung into a frame for the tanning process, that these holes are made when the hide is fresh, the area re wet, or that they are loops sewn to the border of the hide. You need these holes to be strong to hold your swaddle lashing  tight.

When weaving, don't use too many holes as you will need to get up at night to pee.

Hides are fully natural and biodegradable, tough-as-nails when pushing sharp bush and other rough assaults of the outdoors; a quality not present with nylon.

The reason, however, that wool blankets and jackets were so coveted during the trader times is that fur on hides have a layer of protein that will rot if it gets wet and stays that way for long. Wool won’t as readily. You’ll want to air out a fur on pelt as needed in the morning and keep fur pointed out with your steep place well coverd or sheltered in heavy precipitation.

Snow that falls on the hide, weather on the leather or fur, is generally fine as this can be brushed off easily.

I have used a bead spead, doubled over as a lite, natural, bivocover in light precipitation. This keeps the snow off your hide rap and face. You may want to make a quick log frame to elivate the cover in winter.

Two hides are used in just bellow freezing, but a bed of needles and one deer hide are sufficient for summer.

Making this moose hide:

To make the smoked hide, a fresh hide must first be acquired and removed cleanly, without blood. Scrape wet the clinging meat and fat then stretchs the hide using thongs in a square made of poles. When dried, the moose hide was rubbed with a self made non toxic softening solution but it could have been thinned first. On the flesh side a dry scraper must be used to remove the skin collagen, until the hide is just thin enough to add the softening concoction. Rub thoroughly into all surface areas of the hide. Add more in between drying and softening sessions (where you try to break up the hide with a tool like a wood pole with a rounded end) until the whole hide is flexible and soft. Once soft, pull out the hide and sew a sack of it. Set the hide over a punk smoke so the inside (hairless side) captures the smoke. The darker it is, the longer it will last, the better it will resist water and rain to stay soft. Know that hair on hides, hides with the grain still attached, and hides that for whatever reason are not a poruse as the bucked hide, take twice if not more time to smoke as one which does not have these layers. There are other ways to soften a hair on, but that is how I did this one.

Make it soft to your needs. The hide can be rolled neck to rump hair in and tied with buckskin thongs. I roll it neck to rump as my back is on the rump or hind legs all night; when rolled the next morning, the water evaporates or if its freezing, can be mostly shaken off.

Around -5○c and heavily adorned in wool, the hide will leave all but your toes comfortable; dont walk into the bush in -30○c with only a moose hide for sleep cover - unless you are able to walk back to the safty of your vehicle equipped with a mummy bag 3am in the morning.

The smoked hair on hide has a major advantage over all other fabrics or garments - it wicks water like no other.