Can anyone give me some pointers on black bear fur handling?

How do you split the nose?
Does the ear cartilage need to be removed or can I just turn it inside out?
Do the lips need to be split also?

Planning to tack it out like a beaver and salt it heavily with noniodized salt.

Glad you posted this as I'd like to know , too.

Are you planning to mount it or have a rug done?

Skin the nose cartilage out to the tip.leaving about an inch of the cartilage attached if you want it for a mount or a rug.
Leave the foot pads intact and skin out the feet and toes right down to the last joint.Trim all the fat off the foot and toe pads with a knife or poultry shears.
There is a lot of meat between the inner and outer skin of the lips.Therefor they need to be split in order to dry before spoiling.Eylids are similar.
Ear cartilage need only be separated from the back of the earskin right to the tip,and left inside out to dry.
This is all if you want to sell the skin on the raw fur market or use it for a rug or mount yourself.
Make sure you have a good quality hide before you invest the time into the extra work required for a taxidermy skin.
Also when drying the skin,keep an eye on it and scrape down any fat spots that you missed when fleshing,that are not drying.
If you are drying the skin outdoors in warm weather,watch for flys or fly eggs,and spray them down with raid when they pop up.Salt will also retard fly eggs.Watch the nose ears and feet and use raid or salt if flys are an issue.
If doing a fall bear be careful when fleshing as the hairs grow right thru the hide.(don't damage the hair roots).

Wd40 also works great for flies and won't harm the pelt.

Take the cartilage out of the nose.Turn the ears and split the lips.Go watch a couple you-tube videos.

Great info...

I start with the nose and split it down the center being careful not to cut all the way through the pad of the nose. Once you get the nostrils separated you'll be able to put a skinning dowel through one nostril and skin it down (there is a pocket of meat in there). If you are mounting I would just use a artificial nose but that is my preference. Then I go to the lips and turn them. Removing the ring of meat around the lips.The ear cartilage is up to you and what you are doing with it and how you want it to look. If you're soft tanning only I like to remove the cartilage so the ears aren't hard. Mounting I never really seen the need to remove the ear cartilage because you really cant tell when completed on a bear. I salt heavy put in refrigerator to drain and stay cool then I remove re-salt and then hang to dry. Fold it before it get hard as a rock or you risk causing a rip in it.

If bear is real fatty and the hair follicles are deeply imbedded, its always best to flesh starting at the tail and working toward the head.

In this way, your knife slips over the hair follicles (knife is angled the same way as the lay of the hair.) This prevents slicing a lot of the follicles off.

Every time you slice off a hair follicle, that hair will fall out during tanning.

Pete

Thanks for the info!

I plan to soft tan it, maybe make a Jeremiah Johnson hat out of it or just drape it over a table. It is not a big bear.

Big bear don't always make for the best display. The worst hide I ever took off a bear was off the biggest black bear I ever took. I wish I had let him walk. He had the toothache, and in retrospect, I probably did him a favor. Made for a terrible mount.

Interesting.

Boco would the same process be used on a lion?

I never done a lion but I would assume so.Its basically the same with all the larger animals for taxidermy.

P.M. sent.