LIfesong Wilderness Adventures

Wilderness Survival Training Adult and Teen Oregon

How to Brain-Tan a Squirrel

Learn how to brain-tan a squirrel you scraped off the pavement or harvested during hunting season. Our goal is to turn the hide of the rodent into a soft and beautiful pelt. As the title implies, we use the squirrel’s brain to brain-tan its hide. So, save those brains!

How to Brain-Tan a squirrel hide using its own brains.

How to Brain Tan a Squirrel

This request comes from one of our students who is interested in brain tanning a squirrel hide.

He said, "I wanted to share and get some tips (although by the time you reply, I will have already started to get my hands dirty, I'm sure) on skinning a squirrel. I picked a nice roadkill up today. It was getting late and I did not want to work outside so I submerged him in a bucket of cold water. It is tomorrows project."  ~Chad

Roadkill handling tips

First, three things you want to be aware of when harvesting any roadkill.

  1. Check your States fish & game laws about removing dead animals from the highways for personal use; in many states, it is illegal. (Check with them for a permit, it should be free.)
  2. Wild animals carry all kinds of nasty critters like ticks and fleas that stay in the fur after the animal has expired. Store sturdy plastic bags in your rig with disposable gloves for handling any roadkill you may come upon.
  3. I recommend disposable gloves through the tanning process. If you have cuts or scratches on your hands, they can become infected without proper protection.
Teen Survival Camp staff wearing soft brain tanned mouse headband.
Chris Gumper, head of Staff during Survival Camp for Teens with his brain tanned Ground Squirrel and mouse headband. 

Squirrels, ground squirrels, and mice are brain-tanning projects to start with.

What is tanning?

What is Tanning?  Briefly, tanning is the process that takes a raw animal hide or skin and turns it into leather. Deer hides produce a choice Buckskin using this same process.

How to remove the squirrel hide from the carcass

  1. Remove the hide from the carcass of a squirrel by carefully slicing the animal from the chin, down the belly, to the almost anal end.
  2. Cut around the genitals and anal area with care not to cut into the internal organs.
  3. Continue cutting along the underside center of the squirrel’s tail to the tip. Removing the hide from the tailbone is tricky as it is thin and tears easily. Cut slowly along the bone if you intend to save the tail.

What temperatures are the best for cooking meat?

How to remove the pelt from the legs

  1. Starting at the belly cut along the underside of the forearms and legs of the squirrel.
  2. Now separate as much fat and tissue as possible from the hide by using your thumbs and forefingers of both hands to peel the pelt from the carcass.
  3. If you use a knife to do this, be careful not to cut into the hide.

NOTE: if you plan to keep the face and head area intact on the hide, then, like the tail, it is a delicate technique to carefully cut and peel without ripping the skin.

Save the Brains

Okay, you have removed the hide from the carcass. Good job! Save the animal's skull for the brains needed to tan its hide.

To preserve the brains, store the skull in the refrigerator or freezer.

Fleshing the hide

Now we begin the process called Fleshing. Fleshing removes the fat and tissue from the flesh side of the hide.

When fleshing a small animal like a squirrel, you can stretch and tack the hide flesh side up to a board or piece of plywood. Make sure the board is even and flat with no holes in it as rough wood can rip the hide when fleshing.

Flesh scraping tool

Use a butterknife with a finely serrated edge to scrape the flesh and membrane off the hide.

The small serrations catch the fat and membrane as you lightly scrape the membrane.

Gently scrape the fat from the hide. If you use a knife, be careful not to cut or slice it when scraping. Cuts will ruin it while thinning it and cause you to punch through the hide during staking.

Using a fleshing tool

Start by coming into the animal hide at a 90-degree angle. Do not angle your blade like carving wood. That angle will slice and damage the hide. Instead, bring the knife in at a 90-degree angle taking short downstrokes to remove the flesh and tissue. As it dries, it becomes easier to remove the tissue.

Keep at it until you remove all the fat, tissue, and flesh. Once you have done this, the hide is now "rawhide" and can be rolled up and put in a paper sack, in the frig if you want, keeping it safe from dogs who love to chew on hides.

Removing the brains from the skull

Remove the brains from the skull of the squirrel. Put the brains in a plastic container with a tight lid and into the fridge. You may want to leave a description of the contents for the unwary if you have a communal fridge.

Squirrels do not have very much brain tissue. So, what I do to stretch the brains, is add a 1/2 cup of fresh water, rainwater if you have any, and bring the brains with the water to a light boil, turn off the heat, set aside, and let the brains cool. (Boiling is a safety issue.)

Note: remember you are putting the brain mixture onto the flesh side. It will not hurt anything if you get brains on the hair side. But we want to work the cooked brains into the flesh side as much as possible.

How to Brain Tan a Squirrel. The Process

Once the brain liquid has cooled, rub the mixture into the flesh side of the hide. Do this until the flesh side is good and penetrated with the brain mixture. You can also soak a thin cotton cloth in the remaining brain mixture and lay it on the flesh side of the hide.

Then roll up the hide with the cloth and let it sit overnight in a cool dark safe place. Where the dogs, mice, and rats can't get to it. In the morning, roll it out and remove the cloth, wring as much water and moisture as you can from the hide.

Find a nice warm, not hot, place to stretch the hide, and begin the Staking process.

Staking the Hide

The process of stretching is called staking. Staking softens by manipulating the fibers in the hide by pulling and stretching.

Begin by pulling with your hands from all corners of the hide. Then stretch it over the arm or top of a chair. You can drive a wood stake 1-2 inches in diameter into the ground to about waist height.

Use a wood file to round off the point until it is smooth as a broom handle. Use the rounded end to stake your hide. Be gentle with the staking do not punch a hole by using too much down pressure.

Stake and stretch the hide until completely dry. " I cannot stress this enough!"

Your hide should be wonderfully soft now. Run your hands over the hide, if you feel rough spots, you can soften these by using light grit sandpaper, or a smooth small river stone to burnish (polish) the hide. You can always re-brain and re-stake the hide if needed.

Smoking the squirrel hide

I'm sure you are wondering what the heck does that mean? Cold smoke sets the brains into the hide and helps to make the squirrel resistant to water. (Not waterproof.)

Two things leather does not do well with are water and heat. Smoking the hide also helps to preserve the tanned hide.

Too much of both will ruin your hide. Think drying leather boots near a fire. If they get too hot, the leather shrinks and can crack. If it gets wet afterward, you can always dry it by going through the staking process again. So, remember to be careful with heat and fire around your hide.

How to smoke a squirrel hide

Build a tripod out of wood poles. 1 " in diameter. The apex of the tripod is 3 feet high. Then make a small fire pit beneath it.

Bring the edges of the pelt together in a tube shape. The brain-tanned side is on the inside. You can use clothespins, and paper clips, to hold the pelt into shape. Or you can sew the edges together temporarily with a few stitches of thread.

Tie the tanned pelt to a cord and hang it from the tripod directly over your fire pit.

NOTE: make sure the hide smoking is outside and not inside the house or a closed space. If breezy cover the tripod using a folded tarp or dampened bed sheet. Cover the tripod high so it doesn't catch fire but blocks the wind keeping the cold smoke on target.

“The scrotum of a buck, tanned with the hair on, makes a good tobacco-pouch.”

~Horace Kephart

Eating Mouse at First Circle Survival Camp

Watch this video as Mitchell and Tostig, Students of First Circle, share their view of what it's like to eat the fried mouse they trapped at camp.

In Closing

That's all there is to it! Leave me your questions in the comment section below. If you have tips to add about your hide tanning project, we enjoy hearing from you.
Happy Brain Tanning!

Foraging Edible Mushrooms

Foraging Edible Mushrooms

Foraging for edible mushrooms in the forests of the Oregon coast led us to this striking King Bolete. Known as the King, Boletes edulis is prized by mushroom enthusiasts everywhere fungi grow. A hugely popular mushroom in the Pacific Northwest also called Porcine or Cep and is gathered from late summer into fall.

Foraging Edible Mushrooms

Edible mushrooms are plentiful in the fields and forests of the coast. This abundance of fungi occurs because of the Pacific oceans moderating influence. Moist air, rain, and warm temperatures create the perfect environment for fungi.

Foraging for mushrooms is a passion for us. We harvest year-round with late summer through December providing the most abundance. We primarily use mushrooms to supplement our food supply but also collect and dry them for medicine and bushcraft application.

Recipe for Chanterelle mushroom chowder
Ingredients we use for a delicious edible Chanterelle mushroom chowder.

Harvesting Mushrooms on Public Lands

The USFS and BLM lands are good areas to begin discovering and forage for mushrooms. For our area, the Siuslaw National Forest is close with good areas to mushroom. No harvest permit is required on the Siuslaw for personal use. However, there are limits to how much you can harvest.

What the rain brings

A Polypore shelf mushroom the Red Belted Conk found growing on a Douglas Fir tree.
A polypore shelf mushroom, the Red Belted Conk found, growing on a Douglas Fir tree.

Mushrooms come in a dizzying array of shapes, sizes, and colors. In fact, some mushrooms such as the woody Polypore's, are too tough to eat. But have uses for health and outdoor survival application. Moreover, the edible varieties of mushrooms are nutritional and delicious.

Oregon Coast

Hedge Hog aka Sweetooth, Hydnum repandum
Hedge Hog the Sweetooth (Hydnum repandum) edible mushroom. We enjoy a homemade gravy made from this small sized forest fungi.

The Oregon coast is rich in edible and useful fungi. The winter mushrooms we gather include Chanterelle, Hedge Hog, and Yellow Foot. A medley of winter mushrooms are added to the cooking pot.

The Lobster Mushroom

During early August, a fascinating mushroom starts to flower along the forest floor.

A mottled white with a pinkish tinge to pale yellow when first blooming to a rich lobster red as it matures. This mushroom has a distinct strong seafood aroma which becomes stronger with age.

Young Lobster mushrooms, Hypomyces lactifluorum, blooming along the forest floor.
Young Lobster mushrooms, Hypomyces lactifluorum, blooming along the forest floor.

A name that both implies its color, red as a Lobster, and taste, distinctly seafood. Hypomyces lactifluorum, the Lobster, is a prized edible fungus for mushroom foragers to discerning Chefs of the Pacific Northwest.

The truly fascinating and somewhat creepy story of the Lobster is it is a parasitic fungus that transforms the Short-Stemmed Russula mushroom, Russula brevipes, into the non-gilled Hypomyces lactifluorum.

Weird, right? To learn more about the parasitic transformation of the Short-Stemmed Russula visit the information site Wikipedia.

King of the forest

In conclusion. Mushrooms are king on the Oregon coast. Native plants that present the curious forager with a lifetime of enjoyment. Culinary delight, medicine, and plain fun. These amazing plants keeps us interested and active year after year.

“It is possible to live without gold and silver,
And one can resist the temptations of seductive women,
But to abstain from eating mushrooms is difficult.” Poem by Latin poet Martial (43-104 AD)

Follow Lifesong Wilderness Adventures on Instagram for a variety fungi photo's.

Mushroom books we recommend

  • Paul Stamets - Mycelium Running.
  • What the Rain Brings and More - David Arora. This is my recommended field guide.
  • Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest by Steve Trudell & Joe Ammirati.

Living the Wilderness Way

Living the Wilderness Way

Living the Wilderness Way is a life lived close to nature. We wake up as the sun rises each new day and we grow tired with the setting sun. The seasons come and go, flowers bloom and fade, and the tides rise and fall. This is the way of things.

Living the Wilderness Way

Imagine a hunting bow you will make from a tree, searching the forest for it. Imagine the process it takes to create a bow and arrows for the hunt. Think on it.

Living the Wilderness Way is becoming human

The "Way" refers to indigenous wisdom and knowledge passed down from father to son, grandfather to father, mother to daughter, grandmother to grandchild, and teacher to student.

A Hunter's Way

You must learn to walk softly and blend into nature. By tracking the habits and ways of the deer, you touch the spirit of the deer. This honors the deer and honors your skills.

These skills have been passed down from generation to generation. We learn for ourselves first.

Instruct the Children in The Way

We then instruct the children to respect the Way, to follow the track, and the browse sign, and to know the bed of the resting animal. We teach the children to skillfully dress the deer and prepare the sacred food in a good way and share in the joy of the Give Away.

A Way to Live

By living the Wilderness Way at Lifesong Adventures, you learn we all have a duty to the wild. To nature. We are taught to harvest only what we need and to balance our own lives, by reducing our wants and focusing on the joy of simple needs.

We realize that simple needs bring happiness, not the trappings of greed and the illusion of power.

To Honor the Earth is to Honor Each Other. To Save the Earth is to Save Each Other

The newness of material things that we purchase for status and power will soon lose their luster and desire. However, when we create things with our imagination and our own hands like a garden to help feed each other, the feeling of accomplishment and goodness lives a lifetime.

The Goodness of Life is then passed down to our Children,

and to our children's children, and so on. For Seven generations we look to the future. And then the goodness of life is passed down to our children's children and so on. It is Living the Wilderness Way-the ancient way, of becoming a human being.

Join Us!

I invite you to join us at Lifesong Wilderness Adventures to build your strength and resilience in wilderness living skills in a supportive and good-natured community of like-minded people.

As a wise woman once said, "Our people used traditional knowledge from the forest, to help themselves...Learn to carry your box of matches in your mind and muscle."

~Vaasilli Moelagi Jackson - Savaii, Western Samoa

Rite of Passage for Teens

"A teens rite of passage. A wilderness journey to adulthood. Last year I ran across some research that discussed the history of rite of passage into manhood for boys. Recalling my experience of growing up in the 70's and 80's, I felt an "aha" while reading about the history of male maturing. 

Rite of Passage for Teens
Rite of Passage for Teens

Rite of Passage for Teens

For thousands of years, growing up for boys involved rituals to help them gain self-confidence by having to face challenges that allowed them to recognize their need to increase their level of responsibility and feel proud of their growth-where they obtained true grit. As a twentieth-century American male, I had missed this opportunity.

Teen adventure survival camp

I decided that I wanted something different from my rocky, awkward growth for my two boys, so I began researching teen adventure survival camps. I was looking for something that would give them a dose of reality but be fun. Something that could build a sense of pride in their ability to survive and thrive.

Something that could help them realize that they were on the trail to becoming young men and needed guidance and understanding on this difficult path to manhood. My research led me to Lifesong Wilderness Adventures and Mark Wienert.

Rite of passage outdoors program for teenagers

Last summer, my first teenage boy, Aidan, attended a program with Mark. He left all of his screens (computer, Xbox, and phone), his friends, and his old habits. During that week he overcame some deep addictions to our modern life and learned that just being himself and sharing himself with others of the group, empowered his sense of self-worth and personal power.

I've become friends with Mark Wienert and have seen the positive impact he has had for many young people. I would recommend his summer program to anyone with a teenage boy who is struggling to become himself."

~ by Henry Poole.

A Family Tradition

Henry's son Aidan took our week-long teen summer adventure for ages 14-15, in 2012. Oliver, Aidan's younger brother, took the 14-day teen adventure camp in July 2015. To learn more about our summer program and rites of passage for teens, visit the Teen Camp page on our website.

Harvesting Ripe Elderberries

From forest to the Freezer, the Blue Elderberry is one of our favorite wild fruits to harvest. We begin visiting our favorite shrubs from mid-summer through September when the ripe fruit hangs in clusters from long branches waiting to pick. With buckets and hooked poles in hand, these are our tips for successful Elderberry harvesting.

How to harvest ripe Elderberries

When to Harvest Ripe Elderberries

Ripe blue elderberries are ready to harvest from August to mid-September. During which time berries will have a chance to ripen and sweeten up.

An example of ripening Elderberry is the light dusting of wild yeast on the fruit. This indicates the berries will soon be ready to pick. Also, the berry will soften to the touch as it matures to ripeness.

Where to find Elderberry shrubs to harvest

In Oregon, Sambuscus cerulea is an interior variety that bears clusters of small bluish berries when ripe.

This species of blue elderberry grows upcountry in the interior valleys from the Pacific Coast along riparian zones that are open to sunlight along streams with good drainage. However, we also forage for blue elderberries in drier habitats such as Northern California's Klamath mountains, gathering elderberries from low elevations to higher each summer.

We find the heaviest fruit-bearing shrubs at these lower elevations. Most importantly for the hunter-gatherer, you can harvest elderberries all across the US.

How to Harvest

The American elder can get quite tall for a shrub. We harvest from individual shrubs that are nearly 12 ft. in height. They have long and round semi-fragile stalks that sprout from a central core. As the stalks grow taller, they tend to bend outward, especially when loaded with fruit.

The stems and branches have a soft pithy core that will break when bent to the extreme.

Use a Hook Stick for Harvesting

Years ago, I cut a Rhododendron limb with a corresponding branch that made a hook. In the photo, I can hook the flexible branches that grow the berry clusters, and bring them within reach for harvesting ripe elderberries.

Harvesting ripe elderberries. Pulling the branches with hooked wooden pole
Pulling elderberry branches with a hooked wooden pole in one hand while cutting the fruit stem with the other.

If the elderberry stalks aren't too big in diameter, we can pull the fruit-bearing branches down low to reach them. But bending the fragile stalks too hard can cause them to break.

Cutting the berry clusters

We use our thumbnails to cut the berry clusters from the thin green stems and garden scissors also work well. Bring a clean 5-gallon bucket with a handle for collecting. The handle makes it easy to load and carry the elderberries.

Sort ripe Elderberries to freeze or dry

Pour the berries from the 5-gallon bucket into a cardboard box for sorting. Remove any sticks, leaves, or insects that inadvertently ended up in the bucket.

Sorting elderberries for cooking
If by accident we harvested green berries. We will sort those out and discard them. A few green berries will do no harm. Notice the small red stems and twigs. Keep berries attached to stems when freezing.

The easy trick to remove ripe elderberries from stems

Christine, who makes our elderberry syrup developed an easy trick that saves tons of time to remove the small fresh berries from the stems.

  1. Put the sorted elderberries attached to the stems in a paper sack.
  2. Place the sack into the freezer.
  3. Freeze the berries.

After the elderberries have frozen hard, take the sack from the freezer and give it a few hard shakes. Pour the contents back into the cardboard box to sort. Off come the berries from the stems just like that, making the sorting process simple with no hassle.

Elderberry stems. Berries shaken off after freezing
Just a few old dried elderberries left on these stems after shaking the frozen berries off

Frozen blue Elderberries

Frozen blue elderberries
4-cups of frozen ripe elderberries all done. Our syrup recipe calls for 1- quart of berries for 3/4 of syrup. Perfect!

Elderberry pole hook

Any long stick or a light pole with a hook will work for pulling the elderberry branches within reach. Here is a photo of the harvesting pole I use.

Harvest pole for harvesting ripe elderberries
A harvest pole with a hook. The hook makes it easy to grasp and pull the smaller branches and fruit within reach.

To sum it up

A few things to know about the Sambuscus cerulea berries.

  • Always cook the berries before eating.
  • The elderberries can cause nausea when eaten raw. 
  • Drying alone does not fully rid the fruit of toxins, but cooking dried or fresh foraged berries does!
  • The leaves and bark contain more of the offending Hydrocyanic Acid than the berries.
  • Last but not least you will want to try these yummy syrup and pie recipes here: The Amazing Blue Elderberry.

Our native wild plants offer an abundance of goodness, and the elderberry is no exception. We hope this article has helped you, with our favorite tricks for harvesting ripe elderberries.

Lifesong Wilderness Adventures
PO BOX 149
Blue River OR 97413
Monday-Friday 9AM-5PM PST

LIfesong Wilderness Adventures