The first 2 coon I got this year I Didnt flesh properly and they dried that way. The fur is held tight, no slippage what so ever but they look like crap. The local sale in coming up next week and Id like to try to clean them up. Is their anyway I can make them look "decent". They were both real nice sized boars so Id like to give it a go.
Thanks in advance
carl

you can reflesh some what ,but it wont look nice

You will probably have to soak them for a while . then do it over

Just take a putty knife and scrape the fat off.

Best to rehydrate and flesh then board again if they are bad.I have spot cleaned some areas then moistened the surrounding areas and it doesnt look too bad. When you attempt to do it on coon when partially dry it will string out on you.It will be visible.

Ok listen carefully to what I am going to tell you. I have to dry scrape coon quite a bit in my shop. I just take my scraping knife and go over the coon in the spots that have to much fat or gristle left on the coon. In my case, I see complete sets of coon that have got to be completely rescraped.
Once I am done rescraping the coon and have all the loose tags pulled from the hide, I get me a pot of real waem water and a good big rag. I wet the rag in the water and do not wring the rag out. I then start in the neck area of the coon and start rubbing on the leather with my rag that is wet. As you start the brubbibg process you will see that some of the old membrane that is left on the hide is starting to turn white. Once you start this process, take your rag and work it in a circular motion all across the areas you have rescraped. This will cause the greas to start to melt a bit and when you get done , you can hardly tell that it was ever rescraped.

NICE..

Thats one to put in your pipe and smoke long draws on!! Thanks for sharing that great info Don!!

Don ' your using the dull side of your knife, I assume

This is what I don't understand...what difference does it make if it was rescraped and doesn't look pretty? It doesn't hurt the leather or the fur....why should it affect the price?

Pass thru... that should be a no brainer.. common sense say is a buyer looks at two piles of coon... one nicely put up...the other scuffed/scraped up looking.. WHICH one do you think he'll pay MORE for... Dons method "smooths" the hide back out to where it doesnt appear to be "redone"..

Use the dull side of your knife. When you rescrape something, buyers or graders are generally afraid the area you rescraped might be tainted. Most generally if you have leather that has been roughed up by a scraping knife, the hides will grade most usually no better than a slt. damaged. A lot of the time the hide will be graded as a damaged or low grade. When the leather has been roughed from rescraping, it is impossiblr to read the leather of a coon or what ever you scrape. Once you have taken the rag filled with warm water over the roughed area and work the leather over with the rag, you must hang the coon on a nail or something so it will redry. Once you have completed the work and the hide drys, if you have done your woek correct, the hide will look hardly any different than any other well scraped hide. If you get it to wet, you may have to put it back on a strtcher for a day or two. Sometimes when you rescrape the hide, the area that had to be rescraped will be a little damp under the gristle or grease.
One other thing I always do when rescraping coon is, put the hide flat in the freezer untill the whole hide has frozen good and stiff . By doing this you make the areas that are not completly cured the same consistancy as the rest of the hide. I always rescrape coons frozen. If I have 20 or 30 to rescrape, I only take out 2-3 at a time , if that many, because you want the hide to stay frozen while scraping/
One other thing to remember now, the hides are very fragile when dry scraping them, so be very carefull as to not tear them.
It can be done and it can be done nicly, but you must take your time and be patient.

Thank you Don, good information

thank you very much don, im goin to try that. Ill let you know how it turns out.
carl

Don really knows what he is talking about. I did like he said and I swear on my mothers grave they came out just as nice or BETTER then the ones that I fleshed correclty the first time. I think this "the" greatist tip ive learned on this site.
Up until today I had looked at my 2 coon as junk or meybe a buck or 2. Now im hoping for $20!!! Thanks again Very much Don!
carl

I wish I'd known that years ago.

Easy wasn't it. Just send the check to me! LOL Really now, anybody can do it, if they use a little elbow grease and care. I have savede literally thousands of coonhides in my career by doing that to them. The only drawback to it, they may wrinkle a bit. About the only place you can see where they were dry scraped is behind the ears , if you had to scrape the neck area. Did you put them into the freezer first or was they dry enough to scrape without freezing them?

I didnt freeze them at all. I just got em out from the barn slapped em on the beam and went to town. The head and around the ears still doesnt look great, But definitly a huge improvement.
To be honest with you while I was doing it I wasnt really impressed but I figured anything could help these 2 ugly hides. Wet they still looked bad. But once they dried out, they looked like 2 new coon!
Thannks again, I wish i would have taken before and after pictures to show how great this works. Id recomment it to anyone.
thanks again
carl

Back when I started I got a job with the local buyer putting up coon. back then many hunters and trappers boarded on scrap lumber and never scraped anything.
It wasn't unusual to see a truck load of coon brought in that had a thick layer of yellow fat all over them.
I would scrape them down and put them up on the right forms. We had a steam pot that we would use to soften the dry spots and get them to settle on the frames.
We didn't go for show piece looks just good put up fur.