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To Tan A Whitetail's Hide

I have heard that a whitetail's hide is pretty good stuff, but it seems like it is quite a process to get it to a useful point. Would anybody like to share their experiences and any useful techniques? (Don't tell me to send it away to be tanned, because anybody can do that.) What is the time commitment needed to produce a useful hide? Any photos of finished products would be cool, too.

Where are you Hajas? He has one of the softest doe hides I ever saw that he did by hand after being shown the way by someone we all know.

Braintanned deer hide is softer than by any other tanning method, and softer than a cotton shirt. It's some work, but like most things that require personal investment, it's worth it.

Time commitment? Well, it's done in stages. It needs fleshed, hair removed, grained... that all takes a few days, working and waiting a few hours here and there... then it could be frozen for future use. The big, busy day involves the actual braining, and working the hide off and on over the course of several hours. In order to hold the tan and color it, it needs smoked which takes a few hours.

I have done a few, but Flintknocker has done many. He knows his brainin.

I bought a book and learned that way. There a few websites and message boards that deal with it as well.

I have done 8 skins following Matt Richard's book, Deerskins into Bucksins. It is labor intensive but well worth it. Lots of info on the web. My next project is chaps for the Harley and a loincloth:)

Nice shirt mf. And thanks for the book reference. This just might be the year for me to give it a go

I did one a couple of years ago with the fur on (you can do with fur off as well). I did not brain tan, I used a kit. A taxidermist recommended a product called EZ-100 tanning kit that you can get from a taxidermy supply company. Its not expensive at all and comes with instructions on how to do it. There are several steps that include salting, rinsing, saline soaking, more rinsing, and an acid-type soak(sounds worse than it is). Of course there is fleshing as well in the beginning. It still is a lot of work, but was worth doing it myself. A lot of it is prep then wait a period of time then go to the next step. The hide turned out well, but a bit stiffer than I would want if I was using it for clothing. One reason is that they recommended thinning the hide, which I could not do in a professional manner. I did sand it though. I also didnt work the fibers like I would have on a fur-off tan, since I didnt want to mess up any fur on the outside and I wanted more of a rug type tan than one for clothing. Good luck, I would like to do a coyote next if I get one.

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