Alaska big game preserve
For over 30 years we have provided sportsmen with some of the finest big game hunting and wilderness experiences Alaska has to offer. Our hunts are conducted in remote regions of interior and arctic Alaska. Our Brooks Range territory includes 2 exclusive guide use areas within the magnificent Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which was originally established in to preserve unique wildlife, wilderness and recreational values.
The Refuge consists of Only a handful of Alaskan outfitters are permitted to operate on Refuge land after a very stringent and competitive selection process administered by the U. Fish and Wildlife Service. It is true that huge moose occur here and that vast caribou herds dominate the landscape in some areas and seasons.
Numerous mountain ranges support populations of Dall sheep and mountain goats, and Sitka black-tailed deer thrive in the coastal forests. Once extirpated from the state, muskox now range over the western and arctic coastal wilderness.
Large numbers of black and brown bear also exist here. And wolves, which are found across most of the state, are also abundant in some areas.
If marine mammals, wolf, and wolverine are considered, Alaska has over a dozen species of big game animals. However, big game densities are generally much lower than you may be used to in more southerly states and provinces. Some species such as caribou and moose are widely distributed. However, depending on the month, they may be scarce in some areas—even where good habitat exists—and abundant elsewhere. Alaska doesn't lend itself well to day hunts or short weekend hunts for most big game species.
Many hunters find it best to plan and save up money and vacation time for one or two good five-day or week-long hunts a year. Given the uncertainty of weather and animal movement patterns, any additional days you are able to spend in a particular hunting area can really increase your odds of success.
Planning and preparation are the keys to a successful hunt, no matter how you define it. Do your homework to determine the best areas and times to hunt the species you seek. Purchase reliable equipment, and practice with it ahead of time. Be prepared physically and mentally for tough weather, difficult terrain conditions, isolation, and weather delays.
All are normal features of many Alaska hunts. This website has been designed to provide the novice and expert hunter alike with useful information on hunting in Alaska.
When you stretch the hide some of the thinner holes might break. Its ok, it happens, but try to minimize it. If you have laced the hide a long ways and a hole in the middle of the lacing breaks then you have to go all the way back to that hole, make a new one, and start lacing again.
Once you have all your holes cut it is time to lace the skin onto the frame. Lacing a hide to a frame takes some time. I always lace the head and tail ends first and then lace the sides last.
At first, lace the hide semi-taut but not too tight. Once all the laces are in you can judge where to tighten and where to loosen your knots so as to get the hide centered in the frame as best as possible. It is a bit tedious to get this perfect, so do not worry about it too much, just do your best. Once you have it set up as you see fit then tighten all the cords and stretch the hide as tight as it will go. A big-game hide stretched on a rack is a beautiful thing. Take a rest and admire your work.
It will take a day or two to dry. A dried hide on rack can be stored indefinitely, as long as you have a place where it will stay dry Figure I have kept mine propped up against trees covered by tarps and a garage will work as well.
To work a dried hide stretched on a frame you are going to need a new tool — a dry-scraper. These look like an adze and are often made from the end of a rounded, beveled, sharpened file attached to a wooden handle. Dry-scraping fine-tunes preparation of both the skin and hair side of a hide.
On the skin side, dry-scraping allows one to remove stubborn sections of membrane. On the hair side, dry-scraping easily removes all remaining epidermis Figure Dry-scraping also facilitates proper scraping and cleaning of the edges on both sides of the hide.
It does a great job of further opening up the skin fibers to absorb tanning solutions, and on thicker hides such as moose, a sharp dry-scraper allows one to evenly thin down thicker sections of skin, particularly the neck and backbone sections. Many Native American dry-scrapers made from knapped stone lashed with rawhide or spruce root to antler, bone, or wood, have been collected and can be found in museums today Figure I have made a few different dry scrapers from metal scraps but most often have used one that can purchased online.
Last year a friend and I successfully manufactured a traditional dry-scraper from a knapped blade of flint lashed to the split long edge of a moose antler paddle Figure We have found that both flint and obsidian blades have the potential to outperform metal blades for dry-scraping hides, as metal blades easily dull and constantly need to be sharpened.
Stone blades last longer without being sharpened and do a great job of removing membrane and epidermis from a stretched dry skin. I am not recommending that you also should prepare your skin with primitive tools; I am just sharing this for the purposes of inspiration. It really is a beautiful feeling to scrape clean a skin using stone in the same way our ancestors did for hundreds of thousands of years.
Regardless of what type of tool you use, the dry-scraping process is the same—you will use one hand to push the blade into the hide applying pressure as you push down on the scraper while stabilizing and pulling down with the handle See Figure Like anything, you will easily get the hang of it, finding the perfect edge, after a little bit of trial and error.
When you have a dried skin stretched on a rack, you can spend an entire day completing the scraping on one side, or you can spend 20 minutes or an hour once or twice a month getting it done little-by-little. It is really up to you.
It becomes something like a giant painting on an easel that one works on from time-to-time when they are feeling inspired or when just wanting some time for quiet, meditative, self-reflection. You will scrape and scrape and each day you will see the progress. However, you do not want to scrape too much as you might thin the hide too much!
You need to eye this out carefully on the thin spots of the skin. Often times you will know you are done with a section when the surface becomes rough and looks a bit like suede in texture. Sometimes no matter how much you scrape a section you will not get that suede-like appearance and a glossy hard texture will endure. Stop scraping here. The skin might be stiffer in these sections but it will still absorb the brain solution. Lastly, once you are satisfied with the scraping on both sides or just the skin side if you are attempting to tan with the hair on you might want to run over the entire surface of the hide with rough grit sandpaper, just to open up the fibers a bit more.
Once you are satisfied with all your prep-work the skin is ready to tan. As I mentioned above, one could do all this prep-work and then send the skin off to a commercial tannery at this stage, which will save you more hard work.
By doing at least the pre-work yourself you will save the money you would have needed to pay a taxidermist to prepare your skin for the tannery. But here we are going to talk about brain-tanning your moose skin at home. If you're working with a large skin such as moose it's a good idea to smoke your hide before tanning it. Pre-smoking my moose skin likely helped a lot with my tanning success.
Wood smoke penetrates the skin fibers and opens them up to facilitate maximum absorption of the tanning solution you are going to apply. To smoke the skin you can place it in a fish smokehouse and smoke it just as you would your salmon, or you can make a teepee out of the skin by placing it on a wooden tri-pod frame and lighting a smudge fire underneath it.
Smoke-wood can be obtained from green-wood, rotten wood, or wood chips. Thoroughly smoke the entire surface of the skin on both sides. Be very careful not to accidently light your skin on fire. To brain-tan a moose skin I recommend you set aside two days for dedicated work. Just as importantly, you will also want to have some help.
Two dedicated and energetic people can do the job, but a family or group of friends turns the process into an enjoyable and meaningful community event. Of the two days you will need, only the second day requires full-time extended work.
The first days work is intermittent and one can simultaneously relax or work on other household chores while accomplishing the necessary tasks. First, you want to remove your skin from the frame. De-lace it and set aside the frame and the cord, which you will be using again later. Pull out the brains you are going to use from the freezer and let them thaw.
Although, as mentioned above, one brain from each animal should suffice for tanning, for bigger skins I usually try to use more if I have them, just as an insurance measure. For example, for the moose skin I brain-tanned, I added an extra caribou brain to the solution even when I do not keep the hide from a harvested animal I usually always keep the brains particularly for this purpose.
Next you will need to mash up the brains. Some people use a blender for this, I usually just use my fingers to smash the brains and knead them it is up to you if you wish to use gloves for this and all that follows. Every particle does not need to get mashed up, but you should do as thorough a job as possible.
The mashing is best done in the pot you will be cooking your brains in. Add water to the pot. Around 1 liter of water will work for tanning with the fur on, you will be making more of a brain-paste, rather than a liquid and will thus be using less water. Bring the brains and water to a light boil, stir, and let cool. Pour the brain liquid into a 30 gallon trashcan and add a little bit more cool water, just enough so that your hide will be submerged in the solution the more water the less potent the solution will be.
Stuff your dried hide into the trashcan. Once it contacts water it will immediately be pliable and begin absorbing the liquid. Mash the hide down and be sure it is fully immersed. If not add a little bit more water.
Use large rocks to hold it down so none of it floats up and becomes exposed. All of this can be done in an hour's time as an evening chore and, for moose, should be done about two days before the dedicated tanning work days you have planned. Leave the hide soaking in the brains for about 48 hours. Now you are committed to completing the task. The next two stages need to occur one after the other right after the hide soaks, otherwise you will risk the hide drying into rawhide again and then need to attempt braining it all over.
Commit to the work and do it right the first time, and you will be very happy with the result. Your first work day is for wringing the skin. Wringing stretches the skin, drains it of the liquid, and opens up the fibers to absorb more and more brain solution with each wringing session. For wringing you will want four to six pieces of 12 inch long cord, a smooth, straight stick about 3 feet long and 2 inches in diameter, and some type of cross beam, like a meat-hanging pole or rafter, about 7 ft.
Place your "brain bucket" trash can under the cross beam and pull the hide out finding either the neck or tail end. Using the existing holes in this end tie the hide up to the cross beam so that it is hanging flush to the beam. Lift it out and let the mass of excess brain solution drip back into the trashcan. Grab your wringing stick and roll and wrap the hanging end of the skin over and on-top of itself and around the stick. You will need to play around with this to get it right, but when properly placed, the wrap will hold itself as tension increases by twisting the stick for wringing.
Once the stick is in place you will continually twist the stick around in a circular motion getting the twist tighter and tighter. For moose its best to have to people working each end of the stick. As the twist tightens the liquid will pour out. Keep your trash can in the place so it will catch all this liquid because you will need it for repeated wringing. Keep twisting until the wrap is as tight as possible.
One person can then pull down on the stick with all their body weight to provide a really strong stretch to the skin Figure Once you have most of the water out of the top end the bottom end will still be a little bit wet as all of the liquid has run from the top down. To properly wring out this section of the skin you need to untie the skin from the pole and re-tie it from the other end and wring it that way as well. Once this is done place the skin back in the brain solution and let it soak for about an hour, and then come back and repeat the wringing.
I soaked and wrung my moose hide 5 times a smaller skin can be wrung less. Each wringing session only took about 15 minutes, and while the hide soaked between each session I was able to both relax some and work on other chores.
After the 5th wringing I just left the skin in the brains for another night. After all this wringing and the final overnight soak, all of the skin fibers became very well saturated with the brain lipids necessary for adequate tanning.
The following morning will be your most critical day. It has all come down to this. A massive but final burst of diligent and committed physical effort, which, if not faltered, will turn you big-game skin into a real authentically brain-tanned hunting trophy.
For a large skin this work session will be an all-day affair. It took me and my very reliable and hard-working partner about 12 hours to complete the tanning of my moose hide. This is the most critical thing to remember on the day you tan your skin: it will need to be thoroughly stretched, every single square inch of it, AS it dries. If you allow any part to dry without the fibers being fully worked and stretched it WILL dry back into hard rawhide, regardless of brain absorption.
The motto is: Stretch the Skin Dry. It is a tedious and time consuming task, but so are many things in life which ultimately end up being worthwhile for those who put in the effort.
On that final day of hard work, we got up early in the morning had coffee and food and then got to it. First we pulled the skin from the liquid and did another wringing, but this time very light, just to get the excess water out but not so much as to allow any areas the chance to dry too quickly.
Small skins such as deer are best hand stretched and also can be worked over a beam, a tight rope, or cable lariat. But a large skin is best stretched on a frame.
Thus after our light wringing we set about re-lacing the skin back onto the frame. Once we had the wet skin all laced up again we pulled it as tight as possible on all sides. Then, in order to facilitate our stretching process, we propped the frame up on all four corners with cut spruce log rounds, each approximately 2 feet tall.
We moved hastily to get all of this done in order to make sure we were stretching the skin as much as possible while it dried. But you certainly have some time to do a good job re-framing the skin. There is leeway of an hour or even perhaps two for this part of the process. Once the skin is stretched on the frame it needs to be worked in every direction and in any way possible. Some Alaskan readers are probably familiar with the famous "Eskimo Blanket Toss" where a giant split walrus skin is held by a group of people in a circle while a jumper is propelled up to thirty feet into the air by the motion of the blanket holders pulling in unison on the hide.
It is very likely that modern trampolines ultimately evolved from such a practice where hunting peoples had become creative in the ways by which animal skins could be adequately stretched.
I have heard stories about indigenous people bouncing children on skins as well - a dual purpose tactic for both children's play and tactful hide tanning. However, on this day we did not have a large group of people or small children available to assist us with our moose skin stretching task.
Instead, we used a variety of hand tools. Traditionally Native American people used wooden poles, both sharp and blunt on the ends, to press into the skins and provide a variety of different stretching pressure Figure
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