I received two deer the other night. One was a fresh bow kill ( large buck) and the other a small buck frozen from last year.
Now heres my question. I had one heck of a time getting the ears turned on the big buck that was fresh, while the frozen smaller buck was a breeze.
So, do you think the age of the deer had more to do with the trouble that I had or perhaps because it was fresh?
Surely just being frozen didn't make the little buck easier to turn the ears on would it?
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I have always found that the deer that were obviously older are much harder to turn the ears. It has nothing to do with the freshness of the animal, unless the ears are badly freezer burned.
The older the buck the harder to turn the ears. They can at times be almost impossible to split. Never had a problem with a young buck. On those you have be careful not to bust them out because they open so easy and the skin is thinner.
The old bucks ear skin almost fuses to the cartiledge in places. Those youngins dont have all the scarring yet either. You sometimes have to set aside the earsplitters and make your thumbs sore in this biz!
Shouldn't be the new word for the day, but it might be.
The scar tissue Bill just wrote about will be high in keratin.
Bobbi, I remember you asking some time back if STOP-ROT was compatible with DP, which it is. I don't know if you ever got any or not, BUT...it does a little more than simply stop decompositions.
Keratin is classified as an insoluble protein, but STOP-ROT does have a very profound effect on softening ears to the point that they are easier to open, ESPECIALLY on those old bucks that make you feel like you are pulling all the muscles under your shoulder blades, and going to cause you to break your ear pliers.
Young deer? Proportionately so.......
Check this out:
http://www.hidetanning.net/STOP-ROTfreezer.html
I suspicion that the STOP-ROT is more probably "working" on the structures encapsulating the keratin, but as long as it works.
I know there is a lot of people using STOP-ROT only as a last ditch effort to save skins, and capes, but it really has a lot more uses than that.