Deer hockskins

[primitivepaulette]

Couple little things I did with some hockskins quite some time ago. I have a lot more hockskins in the freezer that need tanned! People drop off a lot of legs and I spend days it seems skinning them. Had some strangers come by and had heads all over the back porch and hockskins dangling all over the place.. some real carnage back there!I think I had the young fellow pretty creeped out. Maybe that's a good thing.. lol.. I don't know.

[JW_Halverson]

Niiiiiiiice!

[primitivepaulette]

THANK YOU I'm going to  make some more one of these days! Have so many things going, getting anything done isn't so easy! have about four or five more deerskins to clean up to put up to tan at a later date too! Bout ready to go out and blow flesh and possibly some hair all over the yard with the pressure washer. It's not going to be pretty.. well the skins might look better.. good thing it's 56 degrees out here in northern mi.. can you believe that?  well at least I won't have to worry about frostbite doing this stuff! feel sorry for the primitive persons who depended on hides and skins for warmth eh?

[JW_Halverson]

Braintan is very much an all season material....cold as hell in the winter and hotter than blazes in the summer!

[richardzane]

those are really nice!
I remember the first time i saw one of those hockskin flaps on a bullet pouch in a museum as a teen and thought, wow...i gotta learn to do that!
but i never did!      great job!

[stickbender]

 
     Beautiful!  Very nice work!   Most people toss those, and just use the rest of the hide.  Yep, that is slicker than snot on a door knob!   apparently you are  not afraid of a little hard work!   Now everyone is wondering what they did with those hocks they had........

                                                      Wayne

[bubby]

those look great, never seen one like these, really like the one in the first pic, Bub

[primitivepaulette]

Thanks! Glad you all like the hockskins. After seeing those elks legskin mocs this morning I have to admit.. It's a bit enticing to try something for my grandson's feet. With them now!

[Will H]

Those look awesome!! Braintan or chemical?

[Pappy]

Very cool,never thought about saving them, great idea.
   Pappy

[cracker]

 

[Scowler]

Never seen hockskins used to make bags/pouches.  Very inventive, good use of materials and very, very cool!

[swamp yeti]

BEAUTIFUL WORK.

[primitivepaulette]

Thank you all for all the kind remarks.. think the folks around me think I'm just halfbaked or something! Still haven't cut up those deerlegs I found the other day.. hope they're still good.. the hoofs can really 'dry out' on them and well hard telling what kind of condition they're in if they've been off the live deer for a while! I like to use the pressure washer on these 'after I skin them and holy!' I can really get myself all wet doing that.. but it works really super and well there's lots of membrane on legskins.. the skin is super thin but both the epidermis (the layer the hair goes through) and the membrane layers make up for what the skin's missing down there!
These are leg skins that will brain and soften quite well. it's always been a real challenge for me to soften these! LOL.. well I've gotten extremely anal getting these kinds of things real soft! It was the challenge that drove me to get them soft as I could.. WHY.. I really don't have a clue..
this one's had the little cartilage cut out..

these ones were just powerwashed but the last little joint before the dewclaw bone itself still still needs to be removed..

[Patches]

 I like your work!  I did not realize anything could be done with the skin from the legs until about a month ago when I seen a photo of a bag like the one in your last photo.  Last year I skinned out over 100 legs getting the sinew, and just threw the skin away.  I could kick myself now but I did know any better then.  Keep posting the cool work!