Deer Hide

Last weekend I started tanning my first deer hide. I soaked the hide in a bucket of water and wood ash for about a week to get the hair and grain to come off more easily. The picture below is what it looked like when I started to scrape off the hair.


After I scraped the hair and grain off, I then flipped it over and scraped of the mucous layer. The hide had a lot of holes near the edges so rather than spend time scraping these areas, I just trimmed them off. The picture below shows the hide after scraping both sides. There is still some grain left that I'll try to scrape off. After that the next step will be to brain it.


I had to put the hide in the freezer because I don't have enough time to work on it now. I'm getting ready to sell my house so I may be posting less frequently for awhile.