Bison Hide Tanning Part 1

My brother and I might be the only people ever to try to tan a bison hide in a two bedroom apartment. It's quite ridiculous if you think about it. It's one of the more messy and stinky projects one can work on indoors. We started with a raw bison hide fresh from the butchering class. The fur side had a lot of dirt balls, poo and other natural materials matted into it. The flesh side had meat, fat and membrane to remove. All together it produced quite an aroma.

Our first goal was to clean the fur so we wouldn't get mud and poo everywhere. It was not an easy task because we didn't have a convenient way to clean it outdoors. The bathtub was the option we choose. It took many, many rinsings before the water was not black with filth.



We soaked it in the tub for a couple days and started to become concerned that it would start rotting. My brother actually managed to take a shower with the thing. We got the fur about 80% clean and then propped it up to dry it. It was a heavy son of a gun with the fur saturated in water.



After wringing out the hair, we laid it out in the living room inside a frame. Andrew made the frame with some 2 by 6s about 8ft by 8ft. We laid out a bunch of blankets and plastic wrap underneath to not destroy the carpet.

Notice how dirty the flesh side is at this point. The white sections are places where we cut off meat and fat.


We used a heavy duty hole punch to make holes around the perimeter of the hide. Then we used little S hooks for stringing it up. These really made it easy. Without them we would have had to run the rope through each hole which is a pain. Also with the hooks it was a lot easier to adjust the set up which we did a few times.



After framing it we set it up against the wall. You may notice that the hide is really bigger than the frame. After a couple days we ended up cutting a few square feet of the hide off and restringing the whole thing. Otherwise the saggy parts like the top would have taken a long time to dry out.



For a few days the hide was still wet enough to use a wet scraping tool. In the picture, Andrew is using a sharpened bone.



As the hide dried out, we used a sharper metal scraping tool. We had to resharpen it many times to complete the scraping.

The red bowl is filled with hide scraping that we used to make hide glue.


To completely dry out the hide it took about two weeks. We had a couple fans running 24/7. In this final picture you can see how the hide was trimmed down in size. At this point most of the scraping was finished.



So far it's been an interesting project. Its progress could best be measured by the smell. The farther along we got, the less stinky it became. It was definitely pretty awful for the first week. At this point we have completed the scraping and thinning. While this was a lot of work, the hard parts still remain. Next we will finish washing the hair. Then we'll soak it, soften it and smoke it. I'll post the results of those steps in Part 2.

More Than Meat

There was plenty of work to do following the butchering class discussed in my last entry. Steaks and roasts were only one of the products harvested from the animal. My brother and I spent most of Sunday working on sinew, fat, bones and hide.

I cleaned up the sinew separating meat and fat from the tendons and ligaments as my brother scraped the remaining meat from the bones.



Cleaning the sinew


There was quite a lot of sinew. The leg tendons were very long. After cleaning it, I hung it up to dry.


After about a week it was fully dry.


Breaking up one small piece gave many strands to work with. The amount pictured below is enough for many small projects.


Our class collected a lot of fat. Besides this pile we have a five gallon bucket full. We have been rendering it for the last week. There is just so much of it. It's pretty silly. Stay tuned for a forthcoming blog entry with details on rendering fat.


Here my brother boils the meat off some of the bigger bones. Barely visible in the background is a pot of fat being rendered.


We also started to work on the hide, but I'm going to save that for another blog entry. If we do another butchering class we are thinking about having a second day where we teach what to do with the non-meat parts: bones, hide, sinew, fat, organs and more.

Bison Butchering Class

Warning: This blog entry contains vivid pictures and descriptions of a real bison being butchered. If the sight or thought of blood and guts makes you squeamish, skip to the last two pictures which show what a human carnivore is comfortable with seeing these days. If you want to see the whole story of where the bison meat came from, continue on.

On Saturday March 21st, my brother and I taught our first class for TrackersNW. We had 17 students participate in our Bison Butchering class. We started the day at 9am at the L-Bar-T Bison Ranch. My brother opened by reading the following quote from Steven Rinella's "American Buffalo - In Search of a Lost Icon".

How can someone suggest that paying for the slaughter of animals is more justifiable than taking the responsibility for one's food into one's own hands? At moments like this, though, I understand their perspective much better. It takes a strong stomach and a lot of dedication to do this job properly. You need to be able to visualize the end result - high-quality food - at a time when your sensory perceptions are seeing everything but that. Civilization is a mechanism that allows us to avoid the necessary but ugly aspects of life; most of us do not euthanize our own pets, we don't unplug the life support on our own ailing grandparents, we don't repair our own cars, and we don't process our own raw sewage. Instead, the delegation of our less-pleasant responsibilities is so widespread that taking these things on is almost like trying to swim upriver. It's easier not to do them, and those who insist on doing so are bound to look a little odd.

Each student had their own reasons for taking the class but I imagine that taking responsibility for one's food was a reason for many. For this reason and other personal ones, I volunteered to kill the bison as opposed to having the ranch owner do it. Bison are wild animals so the traditional bolt gun used for domestic cattle was not an option. I used a handgun as the ranch owner typically does. It was an emotional experience for sure.

The 1050 lb. bison bull before slaughter.

Once the bison was dead, his throat was cut for bleeding. The ranch owner and his son took care of hanging him using their front loader. This made the job of bleeding and skinning a lot easier because we had gravity to help.

The blood was collected by some students for fertilizer and other projects.


After bleeding the animal, the next step was to remove the head. Up until this point there hadn't been any student participation, but several volunteers eagerly stepped in to work on the head.

The removed head was then skinned while others worked on the body.


We did almost all the skinning using stone flakes and stone knives. The stone knives were very good at removing the skin.

Several students working on different parts of the hide.


Once we had the hide peeled back from the belly, we opened it up to remove the organs. This was one of the more challenging parts do to the amount of connective tissue that had to be broken up without sharp tools for fear of piercing organs. The last thing we wanted was digestive materials on the meat. It was quite an experience being shoulder deep inside feeling around for connective tissue. The body was still hot inside after an hour.

After removing the guts. The heart and lungs are still inside at this point.


We caught the guts in a plastic bin and took them aside to sort through. Clumps of fat were gathered for various projects. The liver and other organs were kept for a meat processing and preserving class the following day.

One of our instructors Shaun (bottom left), leads students in sorting through the gut pile.


The scene at the ranch.


The students finishing up the skinning.


The animal was split into six pieces plus the head. Four legs and the torso cut in two. We did the whole thing while keeping all the bones intact. I write this tonight after dropping the bone collection off at the Portland State University science lab where we will have the opportunity to assemble it into a museum style articulation. The professor we gave the bones to said that it would be put on display somewhere so hopefully that happens down the road.

Two front legs packaged up for transportation back to Portland.


At 3pm we all met back at the Scout Pit in Portland to cut up and package the meat. Fat and sinew were collected for future projects. Once the major hunks of meat were removed they were sliced up, packaged and labeled.

Students working on the six sections.


Here is but a small sample of the meat harvested.


After all the meat was packaged up, the students divided up all the meat that they worked so hard for.

At the end of the day we enjoyed the fruits ...err, meats of our labor.


Overall it was a great experience on many levels. I learned and experienced so much. The work didn't stop that day though. My next blog will explain some of what my brother and I did the following day.

We are tentatively planning to teach this class again in May.

Forest Park Overnight

It's been a busy few weeks at work. My team released our new website and it took a lot of work to get it done on schedule. I was in the mode where if I wasn't working, I was thinking about work. The launch was very successful. During the final stretch, I promised myself I would spend at least one day by myself in the woods.

Saturday I had my brother drop me off on the SW side of Forest Park around 2:30pm. I had a school sized back pack with my sleeping bag, my medium sized (camera case) survival kit, rain jacket, felt hat, a nalgene and a snapple bottle of water, my knife, a headlamp and a relatively small amount of food. The food consisted of a bagel (no cream cheese), about three dehydrated apples in chip form, about 12 ounces of beef jerky and a Hershey's bar. I also had other non-survival stuff including my phone, iPod, keys, wallet and a book. I didn't have a tent, cooking gear, change of clothes, tooth brush, etc..

The place I was dropped off was not an entrance to the park. It was just the side of a road. Luckily it was on the uphill side of the park so my journey was mostly downhill. I bushwhacked through the forest for about two hours. Along the way I came close to a few houses and tried to stay out of sight. I'm not entirely sure I was inside the park the whole time. I tried to follow deer trails as much as possible to make the hike easier. Finally as I made my way down a ridge I spotted the Wildwood Trail, a 30 mile trail spanning the length of Forest Park and into Washington Park.

At this point it was about an hour and half till dark so I prepared a shelter a ways back up the hill out of site from the trail. I found two Douglas Fir trees that were about my arm span apart. I was a little concerned about rain, so I decided to sleep between the trees so I had some canopy cover. I cleared the brush away and gathered fir balms that had fallen for insulation and cushioning. While gathering I realized that there wasn't enough insulating material around to construct any kind of debris shelter in a reasonable amount of time. Survival there without a sleeping bag would've been a challenge. I took the poncho and part of the para cord strap from my survival kit and tied it to the trees above my sleeping bag. The poncho was the thinnest plastic you could imagine. You could easily see through it. I was able to rig up a shelter with it but I won't be putting it back in my survival kit. I'd rather have a sturdy trash bag. Luckily it didn't more than drizzle and there was little wind to worry about.

I gathered several fists full of twigs no more than pinky thick to make a small fire. The fire was mainly just for fun and to test my kit. I was able to start the fire with one match from my survival kit. The fire was small enough that I could huddle with my legs on either side. The challenge was to keep the fire small while at the same time providing it enough fuel and oxygen so it didn't smoke me out. Using such small sized fuel allowed me to completely burn up the fuel leaving only white ash.

I went to bed early. The temperature probably got to the low 40s which wasn't a problem for my 20 degree bag. I did close up the hole to my sleeping bag as much as I could. I never really got cold though. The fir balms didn't end up being as much cushion as I hoped and woke up often.

The next morning I broke camp at about 7am and headed for the trail. I started off with the bagel and ate apple chips and beef jerky as I hiked. Overall I covered about 11 miles in about 4 and 1/2 hours. The best part was when I remembered I had a Hershey's bar. Everything tastes so much better when you are hungry.

When I reached Pittock Mansion less than 4 miles from the end of the Wildwood Trail, I called my brother to come pick me up. I was out of food, water and my ankle was starting to hurt. Before he arrived I took a quick look at Portland from the back of the mansion. It was cool to see the city with Mt. Hood in the distance.

It was a fun little overnight. I got to somewhat rough it and test a few things in my survival kit. I also got to explore Forest Park and enjoy the nice weather.

Obsidian Spear

A couple posts ago, I showed the spear point I finished and talked about the spear shaft I harvested. Over the past weekend I finally put it all together. The shaft dried out nicely with no cracks and the bottom end straightened out like I planned. Pictured below is the finished product.



To prepare the shaft I removed the bark and smoothed the whole thing with a draw knife. I removed wood to make the diameter comfortable for my hand and shaved down knots till they were smooth. I then sanded the whole thing. After cutting out a deep notch I stained the wood with black walnut dye. To add some style I scorched in some black bands using a heat gun. This could have been done with open flame as well but a heat gun makes it easier. I used a piece of soda can to cover the places I didn't want to scorch which gave me pretty nice straight lines. Finally, I rubbed in some rendered fat to moisturize the wood.



Hafting in the point was pretty easy. I used my trusty pitch mixture of 50% pine sap and 50% ground up charcoal to seat the point in firmly. To secure it more I then wrapped it with sinew. Finally, I coated the sinew with hide glue to make it water resistant.



What will I use this for you might ask. Probably nothing. Some day maybe I'll hunt with it. It's also handy in case of a home invasion.

How'd you like that comin atcha!