Squirrel Tails?

B

Budmandan

New member
My 5 year old son and I went squirrel hunting the other day and we got 5 of them. When I cleaned them, I skinned out the tails and let my boy Have them. When we got home he wanted to tack them to a board and put them in his room. I told him we would have to wait until I could figure out how to preserve them. Now I have 5 sqirrel tails in my freezer. How do I go about tanning or drying these tails?

Thanks, Budman
 
The way I preserve them is the "Mepps" method. I don't skin them, I just cut the bone and heaily salt the butt until it's dry and the tail is stiff. Probably not the best method, but I've been saving my fly tying materials this way for years.
 
You can store them for a year or so if they are salted good.

I wouldn't put forth the effort to tan them. If you wanted to go one step further then the salting, I'd say use one of those magical wipe on tans, or cream tans. Inject it into the tail and call er good.
 
You really need to get the tail bone out. Once it's out, apply some borax to the inside. To make it even easier, you can split the tail to get the bone out and apply the borax.
 
Funny to see this thread here, just yesterday I learned you can sell squirrel tails to a company nearby for 26 cents each. Who would've thunk it? I thought that was pretty interesting.
 
Yea, Mepp's up in here Antigo, Wis. will buy them but you should visit their site or give them a call to see HOW they want them. It's very odd, they want bones in and no split tails...go figure /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif

Better yet, here's a link to their page regarding tails Mepp's squirrel tail info
 
Believe me- not disagreeing on preservation methods here- but I have about a dozen tails that were only salted. This was done about 5 years ago and so far no smell, no hair falling out, etc. Is this just some freakish luck or something? After drying they were put in ziplocks in a large plastic contair with a handful of mothballs.
 
Thanks for all the info. I think I'll just salt them down and call it good. It looks like I could earn a few musky lures with the rest of my sqirrel tails, from this year, from Mepps. What a great idea.

Thanks, Budman
 
The reason I mentioned getting the bone out is it leaves raw meat in the tail. It most likely will dry just fine with only the base salted, but the meat inside can be tempting to bugs.
 


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