Originally Posted By: nofiveoIMO, if you're wanting soft hides, you're best to send them to a tannery. You can home tan the hides with lutan, krowtann, mckenzie tan etc, but as they dry, they get stiff as a board unless you hand break them and once you try that, you'll wish you sent them to a tannery. If on the otherhand, you don't mind if they dry hard, then go with the krowtann. it's about $26/ quart and will tan quite a few yote size critters with one qt. Simple to use, just rough flesh and put the hide in the water/salt/krowtann solution. turn the hide every day for 3 days and neutralize with baking soda after that. No ph checks necessary!
If that's been your experience, you haven't tried very hard. Coyote hides, right after fox, are one of the easiest hides to break. Now if we were talking about a buffalo, I'd say tannery for sure. I have a whole garage full of coyote, fox and badgers that I tanned myself that says anyone willing to try can EASILY learn to tan.......and they're all soft broken.
