Damn dreadi, that's a lot of work! I didn't know it was so involved.
There's a whole lot of satisfaction in that though, nice job.

Oh. Wasn't expecting these.

That's one weird elk.

Thanks, Monsanto.

But for real. Still stretching the elk hide. When the YL was not available, it came to me that standing on the hide and pulling in sections would be a good counter force. It helped and was definitely a work out.

Then I moved on to a bear hide from dogfish. Bear sure does have a lot of fat. Three hours of fleshing and I still get it all that I wanted to. One success was deboning the tail. I have never correctly deboned a tail until tonight. The paws are still intact and so are the ears and snout. I'm going to have to spend some time on learning how to debone the paws and snout or save myself some time and cut them off.






As Fleshed as it's getting tonight.

Nice work, Dreadly

I am getting tired as I read all of the work you're doing, so I'm going to get a frosty beverage and sit down..

I'm pouring something brown myself. And just think, I have a real job too.

Real jobs are totally over rated and should be avoided whenever possible.

I took a break yesterday so we could attend the opera. Some old lady asked us if we'd seen it (Madame Butterfly) before. I told her no. She then decided to tell us the plot, which her mind meant, "Let me tell you everything that's going to happen once intermission is over." Would have violated CoC #8 if had told her to, "PUT A SOCK IN IT SISTER"?She spoiled the ending for us. Maybe I should have tanned her hide.

So back to the elk, it's boring and strenuous. Lots of pulling to stretch it as it dries. It's tiring. It need to be stretched while drying to make it soft. Or else I'll be breaking it over something, some parts of it already need it. I think OldJim once told me to put them in the drier with golf balls. I need to look that up.

Also, there's this bear hide. It weighs more than then elk hide. I'm told it's an average bear. I didn't hunt this bear. A tree farm owner took it with a 8mm Mauser.



I've had a bear of a time getting the paws deboned. Thanks to a YouTuber I got some guidance.
https://youtu.be/RNL2d8Tdhi0

The bees were so interested in the fresh meat of the paws that one of them decided to sting me for it. His brother got his offed by my industrial fan. Don't mess with me, bruh. It's a cool breeze in the shade with that fan.



Those little nubs are bones. If I had done t right the first time, they wouldn't be there. After deboning each claw, and more fleshing with a draw knife, it was time to lay it out and salt again. This time instead of rolling it up, I laid it out. It took 75lbs of salt to cover it.




The process for this animal is taking longer than deer or elk. It's almost unbearable.

The salty bear in the last picture almost looks human.

shhhhhh... PMB wasn't banned, he was off-ed in a coup.

Bear is sleeping with the fishes after a good scraping.





A 8hr bath in salt water and I'll be taking him out in about three hours to rinse off and dry through tomorrow.

While that's going on, I spent near two hours doing this to the elk hide.

https://youtu.be/QC1XzPvQ1Es

And it's still not finished.



That area needs to dry up some more for breaking.

You need a stretching rack. All that hand stretching is making me tired just reading about it. There's got to be a better, faster way.

I was thinking about that this morning. A stretching rack requires making holes in the hide. I did that last year and got a bunch of holes. I don't want a bunch of holes again unless I'm going to trim that part off.

I bet a guy could devise a way to "clamp" on the hide instead of holes. You are "dreadi" man, you can find a way.
Small C-clamps with a small rip cut piece of wood on each side.
The body of the clamp is easy to attach to for the "pull" chords and can be drilled for centering force. A bit of work for all the stretch points, but still less effort than the hand stretching and with no holes.
Just a suggestion, but you sure as hell don't need my help to figure shit out.

We've got plenty of greens here for that :)

I'm going to think about that clamp idea.