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With kill season being here, everyone will start doing fur in the shed soon. What's your little tricks that help put that fur up a little better or easier?

Tip #1 for me is the shot. Shoot the lungs to help prevent blood, head shots are usually bloody. If you do have blood and have snow, use the dry snow to wash the cat right away. Later on if I have to I will wash a cat but I prefer not to... and will use water/hydrogen peroxide on small blood stains.

Tip #2 skin the cat right away while its warm, cold frozen cats are hard to deal with. If you don't skin it right away, put a stick or rock in its mouth to keep the jaw slightly open. If you skin the cat, don't put in your truck unless you put flea powder on it (the significant other will skin you alive if she finds out there are fleas in the truck!)

Tip #3 Use a good bass wood stretcher to dry out the hide quickly, and less chance for any slipping of the hide, good air circulation is also a key ingredient.

Let's hear some other good ones! I hope to hear from some good old timers.

Thanks for starting this thread...I could really use all the help I can get. Wish I would have known about the blood thing two days ago. That and skinning the cat right away...mine was a pain to get skinned cause it sat a few hrs before I got it skinned.

I actually prefer to skin my cats the following evening. I find the fat sets up and the job isn't as greasy. Cats skin easy. coyotes I get on right away since they don't skin easy when cold.

The dogs usually end up skinning em for me,they don't seem to worry about blood or holes very much. They do however like the meat. Oh well what ya gunna do

getting blood out of the fur and too brighten the whole pelt use borox powdered laundry soap once the cat hide is put up and dried. Sprinkle a little on the pelt and just go to rubbing it in with your hands only takes a few minutes per hide and really brightens the pelt up and just shack out when done. You wont believe the way it works! Andy

Andy is right, that seems to work the best. I worked in a fur shed for 10+years and thats what we found to work the best and easiest. If you have access to a tumbler,throw them in it for a few minutes to really soften them up.

Greetings Andy, bored & reading over old post on BGH. Noticed you stated cats in your area did not double back on thier track to often & when they did only for a short distance. A hunter from this area lived a few years in montana & recall him telling me most of the cats he ran there were pretty much straight liners. He lived close to Capps I belive, is that where Cameron lives? If you find time comment on this, please. Been long time since I put up fur . Got more than I wanted of that , working hunting & putting up fur was tiresome, but help pay the bills. Mark I sewed up way too many holes, but must have done an Ok job. When I was done with the sewing got the same price as the ones without holes. Still have a bunch of homemade boards down in the shedd. Hated having to turn the cat hides has anyone figured out how to liminate that. Have seen pictures of frames that looked like that may not be necessary. Anyone, how well do they work? With the boards I could turn a small cat into a large. Of course these coast cat never brought much over 100.00 dollars when i was doing them up. Thanks Al

Al........ I hear ya, i don't care if i ever put up another hide. Especially coon and beaver. I got real good at sewing holes up. We use to get coyotes and cats in from all over the west, some of the cats and coyotes would be almost blew in half and we were expected to "fix em". The best way i found was real tight stitches and when they were dry i would pull the stitches and lightly sand with a fine grit sand paper till smooth. We got pretty creative trying to hide blemishes in hides. We would turn the tits inside out on the females and cut em off and put a couple stitches in them. We could stay ahead of the buyers a year or two but eventually they would figure it out. Have tried different ways to get around turning cat hides but never really came up with a good way. A split board seemed to work the best. Oh ya, there was always the jokers that dumped off the road kills and skunks in the middle of the night. Don't want to do it anymore but those were some of funnest times of my life! Go like mad and get the hides done and take off hunting! Never knew what sleep was then lol

Al,

You can use borax on a cat and stretch it with a split board and not turn it. I however prefer to let it dry flesh out til its a little paper feeling, and flip it early with borax.

Twist,

We use borax, corn meal to dry wash the cats, it works really well! Gets that grease right out.

Bluebill,

I hear ya about the cat being greasy, but for a rookie I still think warm cats are much easier. When I flesh the cats we use saw dust on the fat to soak up grease and make it clump up some.

Tip #4 hang your cats with the hair going againist the grain to make the hair stand up better, do not over brush the cat, if you have any burrs work them out by hand, if you have a pitch spot use some brake cleaner and your fingers to work it out.

Use borax while fleshing, it balls the fat up like a dough.

No kidding Marshall??? Sure makes sense. I'll give it a shot.

Al, Cameron lives in Hamilton area I have never heard of a town called Capps. The cats in this area if ran and not caught or treed and let go will do some running on thier own back tracks but for the most part they dont if the dogs put enough pressure on them at the jump. They do like to make a bee line back to where they have came from, have often wondered why they do this. I have also found that if you have two guys stretching a cat you can sure get alot more stretch out of a cat. Andy

Thanks Andy, ill have to try that. Typically me and my buddy work fur together, that might be useful.

Keep in mind a cat has only so many hairs per square inch. The more you stretch that square inch the thinner the hair gets. Good colored heavy thick haired cats are the ones that bring the most. You can over stretch them.

Good point Mark. Something that helped me avoid that, had several widths boards. Stretched those small cat long & narrow. Found that also made the belly hair look better. Never was told by Goldberg buyer to change. Sure don/t know what the buyers today might say? Duane Petersen local trapper & buyer was the one who put me on to that. He bought from me before Goldberg/s buyer. Andy thanks for the reply, not the first time I/ve been mixed up on names of towns. Always liked those cats that tried to out run the dogs in a straight line. Most of the time it did not work out in the cats favor. Lots of the cats in this area have had lots of practice at escaping from the hounds. Al