Ken asks…
Animal resource question. If your a hunter/outdoor’ist, this is a question you may be able to answer.?
Question for all those outdoors people. I recently began hunting and feel somewhat guilty only eating the meat and not utilizing any of the other resources that come from the animals. Guess my question is:
I hunt primarily rabbit and birds (duck, geese, grouse), is there any use for the skins/fur/feathers/tendons? I also began to tie flies for fishing, is any of this fur/feathers/etc. useful for flies? If so, what kind of flies and which part of the animal? How do I harvest/treat tendons to utilize them for twine? Can rabbit skins be used to make gloves or other warm cloths?
Just looking to see what you guys use from your kills. I would love to utilize 100% of my game, minus the toxic innards and whatnot.
Thanks for your contribution.
Joy answers:
You can use the tendons to make sinew by drying them out and pounding them, the fibers will start to come apart, to make cordage, just wet them and rub them together, they make their own glue.
With furs, you need to first scrape the furs(remove the membrane, flesh and fat), tan them and smoke them so they don’t rot or turn back to rawhide when washing them.
The skins (bird skin isn’t suitable unless for larger birds like ostriches and emus, too thin)(skins are shaved, furs still have the fur on them) can be either turned to leather by the same process as furs or be turned to rawhide by simply letting them dry out without the fur, flesh, fat or membrane on them.
Rawhide can be used to bind things together and act as a shrink wrap by soaking strips of it in water and using them like any other cordage, when dried, it’ll shrink and tighten the whole thing together.
The feathers can be used for fly tying(wing feathers mostly, but maybe some down and back feathers too, waterfowl feathers are great for this stuff, especially floating flies), fletching(arrows, wing feathers), insulation(the down) and stuffing(pillows, mostly down, but maybe some back and wing feathers)
the intestines can also be used for cordage, you need to empty, clean and slice it into small strips lengthwise, and let it dry, it’ll become strong string that you can either use on it’s own or braid and/or spin together to make twine/rope.
You can also make glue from the tendons, scraped skins and/or intestines, boil it down, it’ll eventually fall apart, boil down until thick, this is called animal glue, something like how they make hoof glue.
Youtube and other video sites can be very informative if you find the right instructor and videos.
You can also search around on the internet, you’ll be amazed at what you find on here.
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