What to do with a game hide.
Here are some suggestions if you don't want to donate or abandon a game hide.
Make smoked buckskin. There are many sources on the net on how to turn a deer or any wild skin into soft buckskin. Making buckskin can be time and energy consuming if you haven't done it before but once you know how, it’s effortless, an invaluable skill and can be done with only a few extra materials. The smoked buckskin is the best material to make outdoor gear as its especially durable, particularly against common outdoor insults from heavy branches and bramble; it wont frey like manufactured weave, it’s a material that adapts to the contours, particularly if worn dry after a soak, and biting bugs cant penetrate it. Look at this post for more helpful tips.
With the hide you can also scrape off the hair, fat, and extra meat; save the latter two and make rawhide. Raw hide can be used to make drums, donated to someone who makes drums or stretched/dried for use later in many other projects like hafting and knife sheath lining. To dry and preserve the scraped raw hide, hang it so it does not overlap and trap any moisture.
If you like making bone broth, use can also use the raw hide to make strips of long thong to attach a wood handle to a rock and make a stone hammer to crack open the bones and joints. When wet, the skin is flexible, but as it dries it becomes hard, rigid and strong when overlapped and doubled over multiple times.
The hair scrapped off a hide can be left in the sun, provided you didn't loosen it with lye. Once the thin meat attached to the roots of the hair is eaten by maggots, the birds will use some to make their nests. The hair can be used to make brushes for painting, shaving, basting food or w/e.
A dried raw hide, (wet once again) can be used to store pemican to reduce air contact with the food; the hide used in this way can later be cooked and eaten; this was also a fast simple way of storing most food stuffs prior to the products made today from plastic; this method does not make an air tight container and food stored on them will deteriorate.
Once skinned, the hair free of excessive blood, scrape the flesh and fat off with the hide flat on a table or clean concrete floor using a sharp ulu, or choke knife; you can also do this or over a wood beam with a draw knife that's dull - any way you can remove the fat and meat - save those (if there is dirt on the meat, compost, fat with dirt can be rendered separately to make lap fuel or soap). Sew with sinew any holes (between hair follicles - not over). As you are butchering or doing other things, over about three to five days, passively (every 3-4 hours or so, you can close it or leave it over night) stretch the hide this way and that, use a scraper pipe or other tool to open the hide. Lay it to dry over a beam or in any other manner. Use the cut off metal pipe to stretch the hide borders and stiff stubborn spots. Hold the hide in different angles, sitting laying over your thighs and spread your legs to put a stretch into it.
Make smoked buckskin. There are many sources on the net on how to turn a deer or any wild skin into soft buckskin. Making buckskin can be time and energy consuming if you haven't done it before but once you know how, it’s effortless, an invaluable skill and can be done with only a few extra materials. The smoked buckskin is the best material to make outdoor gear as its especially durable, particularly against common outdoor insults from heavy branches and bramble; it wont frey like manufactured weave, it’s a material that adapts to the contours, particularly if worn dry after a soak, and biting bugs cant penetrate it. Look at this post for more helpful tips.
With the hide you can also scrape off the hair, fat, and extra meat; save the latter two and make rawhide. Raw hide can be used to make drums, donated to someone who makes drums or stretched/dried for use later in many other projects like hafting and knife sheath lining. To dry and preserve the scraped raw hide, hang it so it does not overlap and trap any moisture.
If you like making bone broth, use can also use the raw hide to make strips of long thong to attach a wood handle to a rock and make a stone hammer to crack open the bones and joints. When wet, the skin is flexible, but as it dries it becomes hard, rigid and strong when overlapped and doubled over multiple times.
A dried raw hide, (wet once again) can be used to store pemican to reduce air contact with the food; the hide used in this way can later be cooked and eaten; this was also a fast simple way of storing most food stuffs prior to the products made today from plastic; this method does not make an air tight container and food stored on them will deteriorate.
Once skinned, the hair free of excessive blood, scrape the flesh and fat off with the hide flat on a table or clean concrete floor using a sharp ulu, or choke knife; you can also do this or over a wood beam with a draw knife that's dull - any way you can remove the fat and meat - save those (if there is dirt on the meat, compost, fat with dirt can be rendered separately to make lap fuel or soap). Sew with sinew any holes (between hair follicles - not over). As you are butchering or doing other things, over about three to five days, passively (every 3-4 hours or so, you can close it or leave it over night) stretch the hide this way and that, use a scraper pipe or other tool to open the hide. Lay it to dry over a beam or in any other manner. Use the cut off metal pipe to stretch the hide borders and stiff stubborn spots. Hold the hide in different angles, sitting laying over your thighs and spread your legs to put a stretch into it.
All furs can be dried like this - passively; this will dry a pelt that takes the shape of the original animal. The other method is to tack or sew it into a frame, which acomplished the same thing (that is to dry it as open as possible), but dries the hide flat, and you may not want to or have the space to tack (or frame) a hide or pelt.
One can also scrape the hair off the hide, scrape off the meat, fat, and save those. With the skin, slice into strips and make jelly spaghetti. The skin may have dirt or chemicals/contaminants, so use discretion. If its a clean animal, scrape and hang dry the skin in a clean, dust free place, without folds. If its a fresh hide, it soaks up the rinsing water and therefore it takes much longer to dry, so wash off any dust or dirt on the hide when ready to use. After its dehydrated, store in a relatively dust free area; when ready to eat, rinse well, soak, then cook. Hide sections that have hard to remove, short hair, like the lower legs can be cut away and hung to dry, carefully washed when ready to use, and cooked with the hair, but strain the skin before drinking the broth.
Jelly spaghetti is thin sliced hide that is dried like bread spaghetti, but full of nutrition. Just simmer dry strips till soft, eat, and drink the water.
Skin can be dried in large pieces too (moose included), thrown into water, and cooked to make a thick broth, or jello.
The nutritional value of broth and game jello can be found on the internet; its great for repairing and maintaining the parts of your own body that require collagen - skin, cartilage, joints, ligaments, digestion, stomach lining, and your arteries - every piece of protein in your own body that is white you could say which is said to comprise 25 - 35% of your total body protein.
Skin can be cooked down and used as glue for things like sinew backing bows, lacquer coat for a shine (though water soluble), or other natural crafts. Take the skin (without hair preferably) and add water so its just covering the pieces in the cooking vessel. Simmer (don't boil) for a few hours and drain the liquid into a jar, once the liquid is cool, disperse the jellow thickishly over a clean cotton cloth if the jello is dense or a grease coated plate and put in a breezy place or directly in front of a fan. Put in a dust free room so the glue can be eaten insead. Once hardened, on a oil coated glass plate, the glue should lift on its own; if not, scrape and store. Use a clear glass plate to dehydrate to avoid scraping chemicals into the glue you may eat. You should flip the glue chunks after a couple days to expose the other side to air.
The lower leg, particularly from moose can be made into minute moccasins.
(never tried) If you do archery, save the hair for a stuff target. Dont use chemical coated cotton rags, or god help you, plastic/polyester fibers, foam or the artificial foam targets (unless you are shooting a compound bow).
(never tried) Boil the hide, condense it, dry it, turn it into a bar of hair gel. The dried hide glue can be wet under a sink, rubbed on the hair and used to stiffen the folicles once the gel dries.
The once dry, the hide may be sofened by rubbing it with an oil or other, natural thick softening solution (but this is not entirely necessary) and worked on a rigid pointy object like a 2/4 end. If done well - (thicker hides and spots - requiring more working) it should result in a flexble, dry, hair on hide for blanket warmth or other uses like a hat, or big-shoe-liner.
If you chose to oil the hide before working it, the hide feels stronger and will hold a stitch better than a hide worked without an oil softening solution (there are many, like brains) wich may be due to the collegin fiber having more mobility around one another, dispersing their load better.
Regardless if a softening solution is used or not, it wont come out billowy like buckskin (if it did, it would not be able to hold the hair folicles), but if you pay just enough attention and or you worked those thick tough spots extra, you'll be satisfied. If the flesh side is later smoked by sewing the hide in a sack, the hide will be able to get wet and hold its shape once dried again - though you should avoid getting it soaked. A dried hide can be worked with a proper toolbar any time to make it more flexible, but be careful as he might tear it.
The naturaly oily hair can be cleaned by rubbing it with a fine dry saw dust - transferring the hair oils to a fine material is the goal - this is basically what wallowing does for living animals.
A prime advantage of a hide, opposed to other fabrics, is that should your pack or gear fall into water, not only will the hide float, but it only takes moments to shake most of the water from it as the deer hair "wicks" water - usfull if bellow freezing. A hide on a snowy day is easy to keep dry and keep the wearer quite warm. Blood and dirt that is on the raw hide will generally just dry and flake off. Blood can be washed by throwing the hide on snow and rubbing when it is raw.
Fur (just the fur, not the leather) is evolutionarally, the pinical material of both water wicking and warmth that can be had.
One can also scrape the hair off the hide, scrape off the meat, fat, and save those. With the skin, slice into strips and make jelly spaghetti. The skin may have dirt or chemicals/contaminants, so use discretion. If its a clean animal, scrape and hang dry the skin in a clean, dust free place, without folds. If its a fresh hide, it soaks up the rinsing water and therefore it takes much longer to dry, so wash off any dust or dirt on the hide when ready to use. After its dehydrated, store in a relatively dust free area; when ready to eat, rinse well, soak, then cook. Hide sections that have hard to remove, short hair, like the lower legs can be cut away and hung to dry, carefully washed when ready to use, and cooked with the hair, but strain the skin before drinking the broth.
The ears can be skinned by peeling from the base. These small pelts can be used for decorative ear flaps on a hat.
Jelly spaghetti is thin sliced hide that is dried like bread spaghetti, but full of nutrition. Just simmer dry strips till soft, eat, and drink the water.
Skin can be dried in large pieces too (moose included), thrown into water, and cooked to make a thick broth, or jello.
The nutritional value of broth and game jello can be found on the internet; its great for repairing and maintaining the parts of your own body that require collagen - skin, cartilage, joints, ligaments, digestion, stomach lining, and your arteries - every piece of protein in your own body that is white you could say which is said to comprise 25 - 35% of your total body protein.
Skin can be cooked down and used as glue for things like sinew backing bows, lacquer coat for a shine (though water soluble), or other natural crafts. Take the skin (without hair preferably) and add water so its just covering the pieces in the cooking vessel. Simmer (don't boil) for a few hours and drain the liquid into a jar, once the liquid is cool, disperse the jellow thickishly over a clean cotton cloth if the jello is dense or a grease coated plate and put in a breezy place or directly in front of a fan. Put in a dust free room so the glue can be eaten insead. Once hardened, on a oil coated glass plate, the glue should lift on its own; if not, scrape and store. Use a clear glass plate to dehydrate to avoid scraping chemicals into the glue you may eat. You should flip the glue chunks after a couple days to expose the other side to air.
The lower leg, particularly from moose can be made into minute moccasins.
(never tried) If you do archery, save the hair for a stuff target. Dont use chemical coated cotton rags, or god help you, plastic/polyester fibers, foam or the artificial foam targets (unless you are shooting a compound bow).
(never tried) Boil the hide, condense it, dry it, turn it into a bar of hair gel. The dried hide glue can be wet under a sink, rubbed on the hair and used to stiffen the folicles once the gel dries.
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