A book might get you started, but hide tanning is a tactile skill, and it’s very hard to learn without seeing examples. You will probably struggle a lot with a book and won’t have the support that our expert team can offer you. With the Online Hide Tanning Course, you’ll see the detail you need to tan a hide right the first time.

We'll be happy to answer your questions about the course! Please email us at [email protected] and we'll get back to shortly.

There are a lot of ways to get a hide.  Here are a few:

• If you have the skill and are interested, you can certainly hunt a deer.
• Call some local game processors. They will likely have an abundance of hides during hunting season that they’ll give away for free, or sell at a very reasonable price.
• Look for roadkill.

Half of our hide tanning students have lived in the city or the suburbs and have been able to make it work. If you have access to a yard (or a quiet patch of city park), you won’t have a problem. It’s helpful to have a hose or shower on hand, a freezer to put your hide on “pause” so you can come back to it later, and a drill. If you truly want to turn a deer hide into supple buckskin, we’re sure you’ll find a way.

In-person learning can be better for this kind of hands-on activity, but it’s simply not accessible to everyone who wants to tan a hide.

The Online Hide Tanning Course is actually a much better option for many folks. You get lifetime access to the course material so you can always come back to it, making it easy to revisit instruction for the challenging steps. You’ll also receive the Hide Tanning Course Manual, an extensive PDF download. The manual includes details about when you can put your hide on pause throughout the process, plus a special section in each module that highlights common mistakes and how to avoid them. This written material supplements the videos and clarifies the process to turn your buckskin dreams into reality.

We’ve found that folks who start doing these things at home tend to keep doing them. Taking the online course will make it easier to integrate hide tanning into your busy life.

Yes! At this time, partial scholarships are available to anyone who feels they need one. Click here to purchase the class via a partial scholarship (live during enrollment periods only). In addition, we offer the Online Hide Tanning Course free of charge to all Native peoples. Click here to submit a scholarship application and receive access to the course (live during enrollment periods only).

Brain-tanned buckskin is uniquely beautiful, chemical-free, and both stronger and softer than commercial leather. It’s also more breathable and molds to the body, making it ideal for clothing. So-called “buckskin” that is commercially tanned may contain toxic chemicals. What’s more, it won’t hold up to heavy use, cannot be used as thong to sew strong seams, and doesn’t have the look or feel of the real thing.

You can buy brain-tanned buckskin, but it’s extremely expensive and costs 5 to 10 times as much per square foot as commercial leather. Learning to make your own buckskin takes time and energy, but will save you money.

All of those reasons aside, hide tanning is a rewarding and and useful ancestral skill. Using buckskin that you have tanned yourself creates a deep connection to the object that you are making, whether a that’s buckskin bag, shirt, or moccasins.

Definitely! Hide tanning does require some serious physical work, but we have had plenty of students in their 50s and 60s, and even a couple in their 70s. It all depends on your physical ability or your ability to rope a friend into helping you (this might actually be a great opportunity to engage with a teenage grandkid in a really cool way). Most of the process is pretty mellow, but there are a few parts of the journey that are quite physically rigorous.  

If you’re older or uncertain about your physical capacity to tan a hide, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• You will need to listen to your body. There are plenty of times to put your hide on pause, so if you need a break, take one. Throughout the course material we highlight when you can safely put your hide on pause and won’t compromise the progression of your work. 
• Depending on your physical ability, you might want to ask a friend for assistance during the softening phase. A little bit of serious muscle in the right moments can make a big difference in the softness of your hide.
• Do you have hand strength in at least one of your hands? If you have trouble with this, you will definitely want to ask a friend to help you along the process.

Hide tanning is totally family friendly. We love seeing families tanning hides together! Depending on the age of the kids, their physical abilities, and their motivation, it might make more sense to tan the hide together, or to let them loose on it themselves. Tanning together can be an awesome bonding experience, and is great to do with kids of all ages. We’ve had students as young as 11 and 12 tan hides on their own, but you will need to be the judge of whether this makes sense for your kid. If you and your children are exploring wildlife, ancestral skills, indigenous peoples, homesteading, survival skills, chemistry, hunting, or history, hide tanning can work into your learning smoothly.

Yes, we generally tan hides in the winter. As long as you have a few days above freezing for scraping and wringing, and a sunny-ish dry day with a fire (or an indoor heated shop) for softening, you are set!

The difference here is in the scraping process, as may be evidenced by the names of the two tanning methods. Natalie Bogwalker, the Online Hide Tanning Course creator, started with dry scrape, and quickly switched to wet scrape because she found it made a lot more sense in her climate and was much more efficient.  

Here's a quick comparison of the two methods. 

Wet Scrape Method:

• The finished product ends up a little smoother because the grain is scraped away to reveal a smooth outer layer
• The process takes less time, as you don’t need to build a frame to suit the size of the hide you are tanning, you don’t need to lash the hide to the frame, you don’t need to constantly sharpen your scraping tool, and you don’t need to wait for your hide to dry on the frame
• Works well in any climate
• Hide can develop an odor during the scraping step (this odor disappears after softening)

Dry Scrape Method:

• Only works in a dry climate or if you have a moisture regulated shop to scrape in
• Takes longer to set up than wet scrape
• End result can be soft, but the surface layer is rough rather than smooth because the scraping is done with a sharpened blade
• Very little odor during the entire process

Forever! Upon purchasing the Online Hide Tanning Course, you’ll have access to all of the materials associated with it: the videos, the course manual, and the bonuses. You can reference and revisit them for the rest of your life, or as long as the internet continues to function.

Your imagination is the only limiting factor to what you can make. Many beautiful things can be made with one hide: hats, possibles bags, pouches, moccasins, buckskin bikini tops, and even skirts, shorts, vests depending on the size of your hide, and the size of your body. After you’ve tanned multiple hides you could make a buckskin jacket, pants, dresses, a long skirt, a backpack, and more! You’ll have access to the course material for life, so if you’re motivated, you’ll be able to tan many, many hides and make everything you can dream up.

We’ve used (and seen others use) this method for tanning hides from deer, antelope, elk, caribou, moose, racoon, bison, goat, and sheep. It’s likely that it would work with kangaroo hides, but we haven’t had a chance to try (can you help us out, Australian friends?). Wet-scrape brain tanning (the specific hide tanning method this course covers) is ideal for deer, antelope, and goat hides.

If you use it to tan the hide from a thinner-skinned animal such as sheep, you need to take extra care in the scraping steps since vigorous scraping can tear the hide.

On the other hand, if you choose to brain tan a larger, thicker hide ( like elk, bison, moose, or caribou), the scraping and softening processes will be very laborious due to the size and thickness of the hide. To help ensure your success with a larger animal, it can be a good idea  to collaborate with a friend and share the hard work.

In order to do hair-on (a.k.a. fur-on or pelt) tanning, the process that we present in this class must be adapted. At this point, this course will not walk you through the exact process for tanning with the hair or fur on, however many of the steps, techniques, and tools are quite similar.

No! We’ve had students express interest from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Holland, South Africa, the U.K. and beyond (which is pretty exciting). This course is great for you, no matter where you live. Brain tanning is an ancient method that has actually been practiced all over the world. The video content and extensive course manual will always be available to you, as long as you have the ability to access the internet through your phone, tablet, or computer.

Two days to one year. But seriously, an experienced tanner can tan a small to medium deer hide in two days if it’s all they focus on during that time, and the weather is conducive. At the other end of the spectrum, there are several points in the process when a hide can be “put on pause” to be revisited at a more convenient time (we make notes of these opportunities throughout the course material). It’s usually a good idea to un-pause and complete the process within a year. For a beginner, if you’d like to go start-to-finish without taking long breaks, you can expect to tan your hide in 3-4 days. If you’ll be tanning on weekends only, you can expect the process to take 2-3 weekends, depending on how fast you work and on the weather.

There are a few specialized tools and some equipment you’ll need to tan a hide. The course includes an extremely detailed materials list, with clear direction for what you’ll need at beginning of each step. We suggest various low and no-cost options for every tool, and give detailed instruction about how to make your own equipment from inexpensive or foraged materials. Many of our past hide tanning students have easily created their own setup at home after taking an in-person course with us, which is is a testament to the thoroughness of our materials list and instruction.

Here’s an abbreviated list of special tools you may need to buy or borrow:

• Dulled-down planer blade
• Short length of large-diameter PVC pipe
• Sharp knife
• Steel cable and clamps
• Plastic bucket
• Drill

The only brains you absolutely need to tan a hide are your own! It’s true that the method of hide tanning covered by this course is called “brain tanning,” but you do have other options for adding fat and lecithin to your “braining” solution (fat and lecithin being the important ingredients that the brains contain). Using the actual brains of the deer whose hide you tan can be very powerful, connective, and efficient. For you hunters, this is a no-brainer (haha), since you’ll have the whole animal to work with. If you’ve gotten a deer hide through other means, it’s likely that you didn’t also get the brain. In this case, egg yolks can play the same role. In the course we describe exactly how to brain tan with and without brains, including specific recipes for each option.

Yes, but you have to be strategic. There are many points in the process of tanning a hide when you can put your hide “on pause” and take a break without compromising your work. Throughout the course material we highlight these opportunities, including a list of all of them in the course manual appendix. This guidance will help you plan your tanning projects based on your available time and physical stamina. There are certain steps that, once they’ve begun, need to be completed without taking a long break. So, if you know that you’ll need some breaks, take a look at the course manual to plan out when you’ll take them and when you’ll push on through.