I have an Alaskan brown bear customer with his measurements
of more then a foot an a half different then my salt dried
and soft tanned hide.I told him it will be a little bigger
but not as BIG as the one that he measured!
Am I wrong?
Return to Lifesize Mammal Taxidermy Category Menu
but I am seeing alot of shrinkage stories...that seem to or might be missing one step in tanning process...and something perhaps professional tanners miss this also...
And that step I have found, for me, is to re-hydrate hides or skins after salting and drying, until they are back to original size... exact raw size that is! Whatever time it takes.. (for example it takes me aprox. 3hrs to rehydrate salted deer capes to original raw size), I soak them in H2O , 1/2 cup salt per gallon and fabric softner. Then I cure them in acid...not before... and when they come out of acid the same size as when I caped them off the deer! Next I tan and they come out same size as i cape them also.
Although rehydration in Acid pickle works well for some, it does not work for me. Perhaps it's because I have hard water and double the salt in pickle and tanning recipes...
Now there is perhaps something I don't know perhaps bear skins have some property in them that makes them impossible to tan to original size, but I doubt this... I hope I have helped you for the future... Experiment with rehydrating as I suggest, you will find it in archives if you look long enough... I am no genius...I got this info. from there... and it worked for me and I found contrary info and it failed for me... So Good luck JacOd...if this is not what your after kick it to the curb...LOL
Hi Jac, The tanned hide will be smaller than a dried salted hide until you rehydrate it and the stretch is put back into it. A dried salted hide will be smaller than the freshly skinned bear. When you do mount, go with your measurements, not his if they are larger. A form will only fit the actual measurements off the tanned hide. A lot of customers do not know the proper way to measure and it seems like they always have a larger animal than what it is. One thing to remember before you tackle a large job, is to know the proper techniques yourself so you can explain to the customer why his measurements will be different.You will find out that your mounts will turn out better if you do not try and use a form that is bigger than your measurements, even as much as you want to satisfy your customer.Good luck.
His measurements were from the raw hide. In that case the hide can definately be overstretched. It makes the outfitter look better to have a bigger bear.