Raccoon Pelt

I finally got around to finishing the raccoon pelt I scavenged in Virginia. I used the method described on braintan.com here. This is my first pelt that I actually brain tanned, as opposed to simply buffing it until its soft.

The bare spots are where the fur pulled out when I was fleshing it. It's not as soft as I would have liked, but it will do the job. Overall, it has a somewhat oily feel to it, I cant figure out if thats because of the brains or the pelt itself. Compared to other pelts I've done, and hides too, this one seems a little more oily than the others.

Here is the underside of the pelt. I still need to trim the edges, and smoke it to protect it from insects.
To apply the brains, I mixed it into a paste, then painted it onto the pelt, then folded it up and left it somewhere out of the sun and where animals couldn't get to it.

Softening Pelts and Hides

It's an unseasonably warm day in Maryland today. So I took out a few pelts I need to finish and a deer hide I didn't complete last summer. I have one raccoon pelt and two gopher pelts from the Bitterroot Valley in Montana. The raccoon is from last summer in Virginia.
The hide is a Whitetail Deer Hide I acquired from a friend who is an expert braintanner.

The raccoon pelt is on the left an has been frozen since last summer, looking more like a bundle of fur or a big owl pellet. The gopher pelts have been salted and stored in my garage, and appear to be fine. They just need to be scraped, maybe washed and softened.

The hide is pliable, but not soft and open as you would expect with buckskin. I think a good working over a post or cable should soften it up enough to be of use. I have a particular project in mind, so that's the driving factor behind finishing these pelts and hide.

I will probably use a 2x4 either lashed to two trees or with a beveled edge to soften these.

More hide work

I went back to WolfKeep with Jared today to soften hides. We softened up 2 hides, but didn't get to finish the elk hide, it was simply too big to deal with at that moment.

The hides were brained then smoked in a tipi, then we took them out and dried them by some heaters (its very cold here so thy were frozen), then worked them over a piece of lumber in a vice.

Carl, the guardian of WolfKeep, also gifted me a wetscraper/flesher that he made. Its got some different features than the one I was using before, and therefore works differently. Instead of using the sharp 45 degree edge for scraping, you use the 90 degree edge on the other side. I haven't used it yet, so I cant report on how it works out, but I'm anxious to use it.

Theres also a groove on one side which helps give the hide room to lift up, thus making it easier to remove membrane and grain.

Dinner with Wolves

The other night I went to a Wolf sanctuary called WolfKeep. Its an amazeing place, and if you're ever in the area of Missoula, Montana (about 30 or so miles from where), make a point to stop and visit.
We also worked on finishing the elk hide we've been trying to finish for months. Hopefully it's all done by now.

Antelope and Elk hides

We (Jared and I) worked on finishing the antelope hide and wrung out one of our elk hides. Jared blogged on it so you can find some great pictures and details here.

Elk in Montana

I was invited to Jared's fathers house to help butcher an elk that was shot on the plateau near his house. The area is an amazing play, and I'm told the plateau is a viciously cold place, which makes it all the more interesting. We made a nice handdrill fire (yucca on cottonwood root) and slept by it. It turned out to be very nice night, considering it had been 18 degrees the morning before.
Anyway, the elk was a beautiful cow. It was an all day job, but very interesting. I'd never done any butchering, or skinned something that large. I used a chert blade of course to do all the cutting. We got the hide, many bones, tendons, leg skins, and even made a pouch from the ear (inspired from Torgus' blog post here). We also got some meat of course.

We had a couple of dogs who did their best to take advantage of my generosity with the scraps. Elk meat is very good, so I can't blame them.

Some of the things we wanted were cannon bones, scapulas, ribs (good for bow drill bows and scrapeing tools) as well as an ulna bone. I'll post pictures of that particular bone when we start to work on it. Also the leg skins were saved (much to the dismay of the dogs who happen to like to eat that part). The ear pouch idea was very interesting, so I'll focus on that.

I started by cutting the ear from the head. I didnt cut all the way to the base, though I wish I did. I didnt use any tools, except my fingernails to seperate the skin from the cartilage. The trick, I found, was to use your fingernail to pick at the skin until it seperates. Its very thin on the inside of the ear, so I took my time and tried not to rush, but I accidently tore it slightly (nothing major, I'll sew it up later). I found the edges of the ear to be a bit tricky, but not impossible. One thing I found was that skinning an ear isnt difficult, just requires patience.

Once I got to the end, its a bit tricky to remove the cartilage, but you just pull it away from the skin. I was worried I'd tear open the bottom of the pouch, but it turned out alright.

Finally, you have your ear pouch. You can see the tear, which luckily doesn't go too far down. I left it inside out to dry, and worked it with my hands until it was no long stiff. I suppose you could brain it, but I'm not sure it would actualy penetrate the hide, because there seemed to be some membrane that would be hard to remove without tearing the ear. I agree with Torgus that this is a resource that has been overlooked, and I plan to make many of these pouches (a few friends have already asked for one). I like that I can get more than just a brain from the deer heads we pick up from the butchers.

Hunting the Antelope

This post it long overdue, but thats ok. A few weeks ago I was invited by my friend Jared to go hunting with his father and friends. We set out on Friday, left a little later then we would have liked but it was a good drive anyway. Montana looks amazing this time of year with the few deciduous trees standing out against the pines on the mountains.

We arrived after dark at the camp. We exchanged greetings with Jared's father and friends and then turned in (I think it about about 10:00 by that point, or slightly later). I made a willow deer effigy before going to bed, hoping it might help with the hunt the following morning.
We woke around 5, before dawn. When we had arrived the evening before it was hard to see the surrounding area, but now with the sun coming up, we could see that we were surrounded by dense willow and open plains with mountains in the distance. It's quite an amazing place. I haven't spent much time out on the plains before, or in this section of the Rockies. It's quite a place.

The ranch we would first hunt on was several miles down the road, so we drove to the ranch just as the sun was beginning to warm the earth. Its easy for your eyes to deceive you in this terrain, to call it expansive would be an understatement. Antelope are a light tan with white, and blend in very well with the surrounding grass. They also have excellent eyesight and stand in the open, which means they see you long before you see them. In almost every instance of seeing one, it was either a mile or more off running in the opposite direction, or looking directly at us. They are truly amazing animals.
I didn't get any pictures while hunting, because I left my camera at camp, and I don't photograph animals that have been recently killed (personal thing). I really wish I had brought the camera to try to capture the terrain.
Back to your eyes deceiving you in this land, while on a hill we tried to estimate how far the next hill over was. I guessed 200 yards. Other guesses were 375 yards. When we used the range-finder, we found it to be 600 yards from us at the base of the hill. Its so difficult to accurately judge terrain and distance, your eyes and brain arn't used to seeing that kind of distance.
We were able to get one young female and a buck. Jared and I helped skin and process them and in exchange got some meat, hides, and head of one.

Jared and I cook wild meat over coals often, so we put some antelope meat and ribs on. The ribs were a bit scarce in terms of meat, but the meat chunks we put on were good. We also put some onions and potato's on too.
We were able to brain the female antelope hide that night after fleshing and graining. Antelope hair pulls right out after it dies, so no soaking or bucking was needed. The hide softened nicely, but we're going to re-brain it to make it as soft as we can.
Here is our fleshing/graining set up.

The following morning we tried using atlatl darts without fletching. We had seen aboriginal people in Australia, as well as numerous anthropology textbooks demonstrating the atlatl being used without fletching. Our conclusion is that if you don't use fletching, there must be some kind of traditional techniques used to make it work, because our darts didn't fly straight.

The dart is lashed with sinew, dogbane cordage, and buckskin. It's tipped with an obsidian point, the shaft and atlatl is of willow.

There is a lot of game in the area. I heard beaver slapping their tails on the water in the nearby stream, an owl flew over me while collecting wood, you can hunt and trap various waterfowl, rabbits, beaver, elk, whitetail deer, mule deer, antelope, and many other species. Its quite an amazing place.

Before we left Jared took some pictures of me. I brought all my primitive tools, and used stone for cutting and helping with the butchering. I also worn my buckskin shirt, wore my Hudson Bay capote, and slept with my Hudson Bay blanket and elk hide. I enjoyed having these things with me and using them for what they are meant to be used for.


The blue coloured pouch hanging from my satchel is a beadworked pouch. It's a design of my own creation, done in lazy-stitch.

I have many more pictures of brain tanning, so I'll put them up in another post. I have an elk hide which I'll be working to completion which will hopefully be soon.

Mark of a good day

My day started fairly late yesterday, around 12 or so. My friend Jared and I were planning on getting some hides from the local butcher shop to do some hide tanning. So we got our tools together and drove out to the shop. However, when we got there, we found that our local source for hides was now keeping them all, because Pacific Hide and Fur buys all their hides at the end of the year. But I think we'll be able to negotiate some hides, since they probably pay the shop a flat rate for all of their hides at the end of the year, as opposed to a per hide basis.
We did get a head and several legs out of the visit though, so we cut open the skull and removed the brain to freeze it. We're considering re-braining out elk leg hides to make them just a bit soften. I remember a time when removing brains was a task I didn't really look forward to. But now its something I don't mind. I suppose its the appreciation for what the animals brain can lend us, the ability to turn a hide or a pelt into something usable, and even desirable.
Having taken care of the brains and legs, Jared wanted to try out his hand drill set. We tried yucca on yucca, but it just seemed to burnish. I'm not sure what was going on with that set, I've used yucca sets before with success. I get the feeling there was still moisture trapped in it. Next we tried the same hand drill, though on a cottonwood root fire board. After a short while we had an ember, which we promptly put into a cedar bark tinder bundle and rushed it outside to blow it into a flame. Theres something about making a hand drill fire with friends, everyone should experience it.

It was quite a nice day so a trip to the Bitterroot river near Blue Mountain was planned. It's an amazing place with alot of plant diversity and wildlife. To name a few there were Blue Heron, lots of Robin, Mule Deer, Whitetail, bear (their scat was everywhere), lots of fish, tule growing in the swampy areas, as well as extensive grasslands and willow stands. Another feature was that there is actual fine grained sand in areas (especially around the willow) with many insect and bird tracks, as well as what appear to be coyote tracks. The whole area is quite amazing. After crossing the river, we began making out way up river to a large stand of willow. On our way Jared spotted a fawn grazing in a dried up channel. We stalked up to it for the next 10 minutes (it was quite unaware of our proximity, and even laid down in the grass to rest). I was reminded of what Joey Murray had said about the first day of hunting season, that most of the deer brought in were very young. I could clearly see that even though we were stalking through very dry grass, this fawn (who was on his own) was not picking up on us at all. Eventually he must have heard something because he stiffened up and looked right at us, then got up and ran off.
We proceeded up the river, noteing the bear scat all the way along the path. We arrived at the willow, where there was also a marsh. There were alot of deer tracks here too, as well as patches of Tule. I had never seen tule in person before, it is not common in this area. I ended up collecting a bundle of it to work with it and see what could be made. We spent the rest of the day exploring the river. Shortly after leaving, we passed a flock of about 10 turkeys as well as a doe and fawn crossing the road. A fitting farewell to a great day at the river.
Our evening was occupied going from back alley to back alley collecting various fruits that grow in the alleyways in Missoula. We found salmonberries, raspberries, apples, grapes, and tomatoes. We often find and gather other fruits like plums, pears, apricots, and peaches. That's one thing I really like about Missoula is the abundance of these fruits that no one really picks.
Later last night I used some of the tule to make a Paiute Tule Duck Decoy. It turned out fairly well, thought I want to use more tule to fatten it up a bit. I used instructions from Primitive Ways. They can be found here. I'll put some pictures up of the decoys soon.

First Post

Well, this is my first post in my Primitive/Ancestral Skills blog. I plan to post various gatherings, projects, etc. I do here. Hope its enjoyable, and I hope to atleast impart some knowledge to those who read it.

To the left are some of my tools and equipment on a braintanned shirt I made.