Find Value in your Deerskin Hide

A valuable product of your deer hunting is the leather hide. You may send this hide into several tanners, or tan it yourself. Here's how to make your deer hide useful and valuable.

After removing your hide, roll it out and rub about two pounds of salt on the flesh side. Then fold the edges to the middle, roll up hair out and place in a box. There are many tanners throughout the nation that will tan this deerskin and manufacture leather accessories from the tanned hide.

A small deer (80 to 135 lbs dressed) will yield 6 to 8 square feet of leather. A medium deer (135 to 180 lbs) will yield 9 to 11 square feet of leather and a jumbo deer will yield 12 to 16 square feet of leather.

The tanned leather can be used in gloves (3 sq. ft.), handbags (5 sq. ft.), garments (50 sq. ft.), wallets (1 sq, ft,) moccasins (3 sq. ft.) and other leather accessories. Tan your hide and reap the benefits of soft, strong deerskin leather.

For a wall hanging, it is fairly easy and useful to hard-tan the hide yourself. This leaves the hide stiff, rather than supple. Essentially, hard tanning is as sensible as soft-tanning if the hide is going to be used as a trophy wall hanging.

Another use for your deer hide is to save and dry out the tail. Cut the tail off, and use it for tying trout flies and bucktail lures.

Leather Unlimited in Belgium Wisconsin offers many easy do-it yourself tanning kits. These kits may be used to tan your deer hide and other hides into useful and valuable hair on hides or leather.