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.