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Keeping elk cape while camped in mountai

When your camped in the mountains for 7-10 days and you kill a bull, What do you guys do with your elk capes when you kill a bull your planning on having mounted? Salt it down or just roll it up and bag it and keep it on ice? Thanks

For that long, 5 lbs of salt will save the cape. 10 lbs better.....

You'll also benefit from splitting lips, turning ears and getting as much meat/fat off as possible..

Salt/drain repeat. 3 times should be good. Keep it in the shade, obviously. Kill one early and let us know how it works!

I salt it down roll it up and get it as cold as possible,freeze it if you can.

As a Taxidermist and Butcher, I recommend handling the cape the same as you would your meat but with a few slight differences. Keep it cool! Don’t let it sit in water as that will accelerate bacteria growth. The overall very best thing is learn how to split the lips, turn the ears, split or open nostrils, get all the big chunks of meat and fat off the cape. Final thing and very important, salt your cape everywhere and fold up flesh side to flesh side with the face turned inside out in the middle. Use fine non iodized salt like cattle salt. Do not use rock salt! If you do this, your cape will be fine for a very long time. Also, once rolled up, place the cape on a slight angle with the open side down so fluids can drain off.

Fleshing an elk cape, splitting the lips, nose, eyes and turning the ears is a lot of work in the field. I’ve done dall sheep before and that’s a lot of work. If I couldn’t get it on ice in a reasonable amount of time I’d seriously consider just buying a cape before I did all that AND packed it out.

Ice can be a meat`s friend but not necessarily a cape or hides friend. If you can`t freeze it....forget it. What butcherboy posted is the best scenario. If you spend a little more time caping the animal you won`t need to do a whole lot of fleshing. Most are using a Havalon which is the perfect tool for splitting the lips and nose. It doesn`t have to be done as if a taxidermist is doing it, do your best and get it into the salt. There are also some sprays we use to inhibit bacteria growth.

I shouldn’t have said ice, Franklin is right. You don’t want it in a cooler where there’s no airflow. Bacterial growth will cause hair to slip. So you want to keep it cool and dry.

Every taxidermists I’ve ever talked to has said, do not salt a cape unless it’s fleshed and everything is essentially done. It makes their job way more difficult getting cured jerky meat off of the cape.

Thanks for the input guys. I’m leaving next Friday and I just want to be prepared in case luck shines on me. I’ll probably go ahead and take some salt with me and keep in the truck in case I need to salt one at camp.

Mossy....usually when they are "rough fleshed" in the bush and salted they will just send it off to the tannery or if they do their own tanning, start the tanning process. I am a tanner and that`s how I get them. You can tell which ones are done in the shop and which ones are not. We use a shaving machine and it`s pretty much no difference to us. You are right about trying to flesh a partially salt dried hide, it`s next to impossible.

If you don’t know how to flesh it out and turn everything. It should be taken to a freezer or cooler with the meat. What are you doing with the meat for 7-10 days.

If you can drive it to town. So many hunters have gotten the dreaded phone call “Your hide slipped” which means the hair fell out. You wait all year to kill a bull. Take ine day and make the drive. If you want to use your own taxidermist have it tanned locally then shipped to you.

I salted mine as advised and rolled it tight and put it in the shade during the day at night it was cool so I unrolled it and let cool before rolling it back up in the am. No slippage and the mount looks great.

Avoid getting the hide wet. Learning how to turn and flesh is most important. Once you can to that, salting is perfect. Salt is #1 if there is no red meat or globs of fat and it can reach all of the hide. Freezing is the next best means to slow bacterial growth. You can freeze before fleshing and salting, but salting before freezing isn’t the best idea.

Think about what salt does to ice and question salting an unfleshed hide before freezing. Most important thing is to keep bacteria from doing its job.

—Bill

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