Curing Rabbit & Hare Skins For Retreiving/Dummy Training.

Just a quick post in case you find yourself with the opportunity to get some Rabbit/Hare pelts for your fur and feather dummy training.

I used to use drawing pins and a hammer (watch ya thumbs tho) and stretched the pelt out tightly over a piece of old ply wood then rubbed plenty of salt in over the whole skin side and just left it for a week in my cellar.

I had a Pub at the time and the cellar was ideal for both hanging game and drying pelts. The temperature was constantly below 12 degrees and the air was dry so the pelts dried out in not time. No smells or mess what so ever...but it did cause a few barmaids to come up screaming from the cellar having been confronted with "dead things" whilst attempting to change a barrell...Ohhh I had many a laugh....

Anyway... a normal well ventilated cellar/storage area should do the trick but it may take a little longer to fully dry thats all.

I then used to scrape of the cristalised salt and give the pelt a quick wash then dry it naturaly just pegged up on a line or laid out on a garden chair for an hour or two. This way my ESS would'nt end up with a mouth full of salt during a retreive.

A friend once advised me to rub in a little cooking oil to make the pelt more subtle and last longer before it was zip tagged on to my dummies...but Ive never tried it yet..might give it ago with the next one tho.

Oh!....I just remembered something else I was once told....most people during skinning a rabbitt or hare, pull down the pelt to the top of the neck below the head and then cut off the head and the pelt all in one go.

Well a friend of mine used to then turn the pelt the right way round (as nature intended) with the head still connected then insert a large dummy in to the pelt from the arse end with the throwing chord hanging out and then zip tag it shut at the bottom so the dummy wouldnt fall out.

He would then use the dummy and pelt still complete with head for the dog to retreive over the next few days then replace with a fresh one using the same process.

He swore by it and said that more natural scent would be left on the pelt if "unmessed with" which is obviously better for blind retrieves etc and the dummy also looked and felt more realistic to the dog, with the rabbitts/hares head swinging around, much in the way a dokken is supposed to replicate.

Not everybodys cup of tea I'm sure, but I think he made a few good points.....

Let me know how you get on if any of you try it.

Kindest regards,

Jase