Fat and Fleshing deer hides

[Brow Tine]

Does anyone have any suggestions on the best way to flesh out a hide.

[timstaxidermy]

Good question and one all hunters should have a idea about. in the field a person can roughly flesh out a deers head and salt it down to stop slippage and then shake it off after a day and resalt it again and shake it off and put it in a burlap bag ONLY plastic will make it rot as air cannot
penetrate the skin.
to skin out capes use a scalpel you can buy at a farmers mill or coop store with blades.
a larger skinning knife super sharp is used to do the cape part itself.
if you are bringing it to a taxidermist just remove the large pieces offlesh that might contain any blood or bulllet holes.
it is a very time consuming venture and leave lots of time to do so.
it takes me at least 4-5 hrs. to completely skin a whitetail cape using just
knives.

[Brow Tine]

I made a fleshing board and draw knife that worked really well. Il try and post a few pics out here and my notes.

[Brow Tine]

Here is the fleshing beam I made and fleshing knife. Its a little crude but worked great for me.

[rampage]

if you want to get them clean spend the money and by a necking knife.
If you have alot to do you should get a fleshing beam and and just start going at it. I do several hundred every year and have no prob. Simply lay deer hide on beam and in a rowing fashion push the knife down the board and use your belly to hold the hide in place in the beam At first it is very heavy an hard to deal with but a soon as you get the major fat and meat off it will get lighter and the more you do the better you will get at it remember the skin tears very easy in the armpit area. There is no trick to just do the work it is very hard on the back but once you get going its very simple. As soon as you have the fat and meat off simply lay down and salt. Rub salt over all the hide and you will have no probs. You will not even have much fluid drain off because they are so clean. What do you want to do with your hides that you need the so clean.

[Brow Tine]

I made several buckskin hides this year. Somewhere used for sheaths and some for possibles bags.
The beam worked really well for the most part. I will invest in a better fleshing knife this year.
I smoked the leather with some hickory and it gave it a nice dark tan
There really isn't much to it but it sure take a lot of elbow grease.

Here is a post of some of the pieces that are completed

http://www.deerhuntingchat.com/viewtopic.php?t=6433

[macro_grp02]

The best way to do it is to clean it as much as possible. Get all the flesh that you can. Salt it and send it over to a taxidermist .