Time out for a bear skinning.

While waiting for the hide to swell in the bucking solution, I got a phone call that doesn't happen everyday, at least not to me.  I'd been hemming and hawing about visiting my grandparents and cousins when my aunt called me.

"Oh hey Fran, what are you up to?"

"Just getting ready to look at the hide to see if it's ready to rinse and grain."

"Are you coming down to Fulks Run tonight?"

"Not sure..."

"Well maybe you'll change your mind when you find out---Walker got a bear!"

I felt it where there was no blood.  Very soft (I guess I should have known that).

Hot dog! Everyone in the family was all excited and taking pictures with the bear (not the girl from Maryland who was with another cousin, though...she seemed scared).  I got there just in time to meet up with Walker as he took it to the house of another hunter for skinning.  Two of the men were hunters and one was a taxidermist.  Not sure what they thought about a girl showing up to the skinning. I always think it's some special and unusual thing to be interested in the goings-on with dead animals, but in the country, the women are tough.  When I was the only girl at my taxidermy course in Wisconsin, I thought I'd get different treatment.  No way. 

I talked taxidermy shop with the taxidermist and he explained some of the anatomy as they were skinning the bear.  Walker was deciding between a half mount and shoulder mount, meaning the skin had to be carefully removed around the head and front paws to preserve it.  It's difficult to mount a skin that you've cut and then sewn.  Half mount is literally half the bear, and shoulder mount basically means the head.  When you see a deer mounted with its neck and head, that's technically called a shoulder mount. 

Whenever I see something like this for the first time (you know, a skinning), I'm always a little nervous about seeing the carcass, but it ends up being more of a learning/interesting experience.  The meat was cut into different pieces and shared with the other hunters (ribs, thighs, etc.).  I've tasted bear once; it was canned and from a man at Biltmore who lives in Appalachia.  I could never understand about 90% of what he said to me.

I know these pictures are weird, and I'm not quite sure how much you'd appreciate me trying to talk you into enjoying them.  So I've decided I'll just post them, and you can be the judge of whether you find them fascinating or disturbing.

The fellas said that hundreds of bears from the surrounding mountains have been skinned in that room over the decades. 

That's my hand (see the sillyband?); that's as far as I helped.  The men said other bears have had about 4 more inches of fat than this one.

Walker, splitting up the meat.

This one is my favorite.

After.

Good job, guys.