#moosehidetanning

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This is a photo of Lucy-Anne Yakeleya’s hide out at Blachford Lake Lodge during a Dechinta visioning & planning retreat in November, 2015. Here, her hide is on the final smoke. This means that the hide has been soaked and rubbed in brain paste and solution and that it has been softened and scraped to satisfaction. After the final smoke the hide is ready to be used as a leather.  This smoking method is called a “flat smoke”. The hide is laid flat over top peeled logs above a smoke pit, as pictured above. Charred or rotten spruce wood, a.k.a “tinchur” in Denesuline or “dah’shaa” in Tlicho, is lit on fire to produce a tiny flame and an abundance of smoke. This rotten, orange wood can be found wherever a spruce tree has fallen and when moss begins to cover the limbs of the tree. Kick the moss off, throw your work gloves on and gather the bits of rotten spruce wood in a bucket. Some people like to use the larger chunks of wood for smoking and other folks prefer to use the tiny little crumbs of wood. Either way is suitable. This smoke is what gives traditional brain-tanned moosehide its’ one-of-a-kind smell and coloring. Smoking the hide also helps it to absorb the brain paste, as explained in a few of my posts below.  

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Disclaimer: I know that in some cultures it is considered disrespectful to take photos of harvested animals, as this is seen as disrespecting their lives which they generously give to us. The folks who I am privileged to travel and hunt with don’t have these customs, and so we often document our hunts. Please understand that this is just my way of doing things, but that I respect other cultures who have different beliefs.  Here are some photos of the moose that I shot on McLean Bay on our way to Fort Reliance last summer. The first photo shows the moose just after we drove up to her on the shoreline and Kyle began to make the straight cut down the stomach after cutting off the head- this is always the first step when you are field dressing big game, as it helps to drain the blood and cool off the meat. The photos below show me helping to skin her out, the community folks coming to take meat from the harvest at the Desnethche gathering site, and Kyle and his daughter Gah fleshing the hide. 

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Here are some photos of Sara Gillis, Mandee McDonald, Jennifer Neyando and I. This is the first hide I ever worked on- the Deh Cho winter bull that I mentioned in my posts below. Here we are working at the Dechinta out-camp site on Blachford Lake in the fall of 2012.  Photos c/o the Northern Journal

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This is a photo that I took of my old cow moose hide that was harvested last summer on McLean Bay. I left the hide folded up in the back of my father’s truck and when spring arrived and I unraveled the skin, mold was everywhere. The good news is that I began to scrape it and the mold spores didn’t completely penetrate the skin, so it is still a good hide. Although it terrified me to see mold on my first hide that I harvested myself, I learned something new about how hides must be stored and about what to do when you see little black spots covering your beloved skin that you worked so hard on.