Wyatt got a small bear with his bow last fall. We are trying our hand at tanning it.
Fleshed and salted it yesterday.
Today we scraped salt off and re-salted it. We will leave it for four days and then next steps.

Good luck. I think the bear will take extra attention. They are pretty greasy.

I'll be following this thread. Good to see Wyatt again. Is he trapping beaver this year ?

Dale, I have done a couple for him and he said he has a couple more in the freezer. The other day when he left he said the beaver better start getting nervous. He has a couple spots. If he runs outta spots I can show him a few.

Great project and thanks for sharing with us. Will be watching for updates.

Looks great so far Newfox. Good degreasing in the rehydration and in the pickle will definitely help. The head/neck area is hard to thin enough on decent size bears but I've had real good luck with the trubond on small bears.

Washxc, that’s what we are using Trubond. Wyatt got some lubri-stretch to try. And 1000b.

Rehydrated the bear. 10 gallons warm water, 10 oz. Dawn, 2.5 lbs salt for one hour.
Then we hung bear over sink and rinsed good.

Then we mixed pickle, also 10 gallons. 10 lbs salt, 30oz. Citric acid, 8oz lipisolve 77.
Going to leave bear in 9 days and then we will finish it. We may take it out and check for any more fleshing that we might have missed on day 8.

Scraped all the salt off before we rehydrated.

You will do well with it. The lipasolve and Citric will help with the grease.

Pat, nice mud season project.

Great job!

Looks like it is going well. Following to see the rest of the process. Thanks for taking us along.

Took bear out of pickle and let it drain a bit.
Bear into nutrilizer , one oz. Baking soda and a handful of salt per gallon. We used five gallons.
Nutrilized for 45 minutes the hung outside and blowed some water out with shop-vac. Then we wrapped in towels.

Heating tanning oil on stove a little

Got the warm tanning oil rubbed in. Let it dry awhile.

Any update on the bear? I know the head and neck on mine have been a bit stiff without being thinned on a wheel, but I've been happy enough.

Wyatt sent me this pic tonight, said the bear is drying slow but it is almost dry.