Garment tanning a bear?
Bears
I’m seriously considering a bear tag. No interest in a rug, but I would REALLY like to turn one into a coat. Maybe an anorak with a hood? Seems like the best way to skin for that would be to case it, but no idea if there are tanneries that would be able to process one that way….
Is anyone out there familiar with an outfit which could take on that kind of a project?
I’ve case skinned and tanned about a dozen bears. No issues at all.
Is that a DIY project for you, or did you send them out? I don’t think I could swing that on my own. Just not enough space to work here….
Ive fleshed and salted dozens of bears, case or open skinned wont matter to the tannery. If you dont have the tools to flesh one find a trapper and see if you can pay them to do it for you. Once fleshed, ears turned and lips split salt it down good and let it dry. Call some tanneries and make sure they are on the same page as you for the type of tanning you want.
Try Moyles or Z and L Tannery. As trappers we use these two a lot and are quite happy. Both do great work
Call USA Fox and Furs in Duluth Mn. for Tanning
I have a big one in the freezer and am considering the same project so following along. I will tell you Trapperman.com has bunch of this type of stuff on it.
Thanks, guys — this will definitely need to be a full-service kind of a deal… I’m pretty fair with skinning and getting deer hides in good shape to send out, but I’ve never attempted lips or ears…. And only a few furs, vs deer & Elk. And of course nothing this size…. No idea what I’d be getting myself into with a bear.
Do a YouTube search on fleshing hides with a power washer. It was a huge game changer for me in my taxidermy shop. Do you want the head on? If not then no need to turn lips, and ears. Just cut the head off. It may take more than one bear hide to make a proper coat. Unless you shoot a grizz.
To get best look for a coat u may need a couple bears . I’ve got 3 soft tanned bears I’ve been thinking of making a coat from
"Is that a DIY project for you, or did you send them out?"
They were sent out to be tanned commercially with no issues.
Timex, that's a few bucks for your hair on deer skin The going price in Wis as of today is 108.00 I send alot of fur out to Idaho, fair prices
I've never seen a full bear coat but I made a bomber hat for a guy out of the rear half of a bear skin. He had the front half mounted and didn't want to throw the rest away. I'd imagine they would make beautiful mittens too.
New one in Central MN to consider. Yotes to Coats: https://yotestocoatstannery.com/
Whatever you do DO NOT CALL USA Fox and Furs in Duluth Mn. for Tanning unless you never want to see your fur again!!!!!!!
Worst reputation in the business! I belong to a few trapping sites & hands down Moyles gets top grades & USA Fox & Furs gets the worst. More people lose furs through USA consistently & the wait times on the furs that do get returned are horrendous. Moyles seems to give quality & fast turn around.
That being said I send my coyotes to Wild Things Furs in Wisconsin with good results.
Sleepy Creek Tannery in Iowa does good work, they do all my beaver pelts.
Nomad, are you talking about wild things, in Rockton Wis?
I also just had 3 deer hides tanned with hair on, for grandson. Wolf River Tanning, Schiocton Wis Their reviews were only fair, but I was very satisfied with the work. About 100.00 per hide
I guess the good news is that if you case it, you can always try it on before you have anyone start to cutting….
I guess that’d be a reason to pass on a color-phase bear ;)
I’m just figuring that if a guy could get a pelt in good condition… and since a bear needn’t be much over #250 in order to be twice as big as I am….. I could get lucky…
Nomad, I have a deer camp in that valley. Lots of fun at the bar in Rocton, come hunting season, place to see good bucks. Good food too
I love a cased out bear hide.
My grandfather was a furrier and made fur coats for a living. It's not like you just take a hide and put a pattern on it as if it were a piece of cloth. Fur flows in different directions on different parts of the body. It also has different characteristics (length/shade/coarseness) in different parts of the body. A good fur coat is actually made of many strips of hide cut from the "right" part of the hide and sewn together.
If you really want a good bear coat you ought to talk to a furrier first instead of a tannery. He can tell you whether 1 bear would be adequate and where to send it for tanning (or maybe he will send it) in order for him to make the style coat you want. A tannery will not make a coat for you and it doesn't sound like you want to make the coat yourself (it would be more difficult and take longer to make the coat from tanned fur than to tan the fur and require investing in sewing equipment for leather and lots of training into how to make a fur coat properly).
Interesting idea. Would that finished product be kind of heavy? From what Aspen described, I would think a good quality finished product would be a bit on the spendy side?
I’m sure it would be, if I were thinking to do to Professional Furrier standards, but I was actually thinking along much more Primitive lines. Seems like once you figure out how to open it up under the chin, you could just throw it on as an anorak kind of a thing and wear the head as a hood, but I’d (obviously) want to look into how the various First Nations went about it and what modifications the Mountain Men introduced. But I can’t imagine it’s never been done before, and done by people who didn’t have the luxury of piecing together hides where they had taken their half (or third) out of the middle. More power to those who do, but I’m just on an entirely different channel here…
