What can I use these for?

[Dan Druff]

As a Christmas gift to my boys, I have paid for a spot with a guide in Oklahoma and I am paying for each of them to shoot a wild hog. I will hopefully be harvesting an exotic ram on this same trip. I am unsure which species of ram I will have an opportunity with, however.

Instead of doing a full taxidermy mount or a euro mount with the ram, I am thinking about making a couple of powder horns using the ram horns. But I am unsure of what I can use the hide for. Should I have it tanned hair on or hair off? Would the hide be good for bags, mocs, clothing, or something else? Iam unsure of the thickness of rams hide versus other hides. Is there a better use for the horns that I am overlooking?

As for the two hogs, I plan to get the skulls euro mounted for the boys. But is there any use for their hides? One of my fellow club members said "yeah, make a football". Lol. Would it be a waste of time to have the hides tanned for use in some sort of crafting?

That same club member suggested tanning the rams hide hair on and making a vest out of it. Not a bad idea, but I'm not too sure that would be period correct. I would like to keep whatever crafts I do make with these items somewhat period correct. I tend to lean towards pre 1840, but am open to ideas up to about 1880.

I am new to making my own accouterments having only made one horn thus far, so please shoot me some ideas...

 

[Phil Coffins]

As far as period correct, there wasn’t any exotic rams out here in the early 1800s.

 

[Dan Druff]

As far as period correct, there wasn’t any exotic rams out here in the early 1800s.

I know that's true, but there were domestic rams, goats, sheep, etc. I would simply use the exotic material in place of traditional, but want to keep the traditional construction. Hope that makes sense. Traditional and period correct, but with an exotic ram in place of domestic.

 

[LonestarShootR]

If the hogs your boys take are 200+ lbs the hide will make decent gloves and bag leather. They may or may not have tusk which add to a European mount.
Like big bucks, truly big hogs are not behind every bush except maybe on high fenced places where they are A la carte.
Don't get to hung up on the ram-sheep thing, Texas domesticated the "exotics" along time ago.

 

[Dan Druff]

If the hogs your boys take are 200+ lbs the hide will make decent gloves and bag leather. They may or may not have tusk which add to a European mount.
Like big bucks, truly big hogs are not behind every bush except maybe on high fenced places where they are A la carte.
Don't get to hung up on the ram-sheep thing, Texas domesticated the "exotics" along time ago.

This will be at a high fence ranch. I would've thought the hog hide would be too thick to do much with. This gives me hope. Thanks!

 

[Beaverman2]

This will be at a high fence ranch. I would've thought the hog hide would be too thick to do much with. This gives me hope. Thanks!

Any hide that is thick can be split and made thinner, problem is finding a decent tannery anymore, they have been disappearing from the landscape due to epa requirements, most of the leather you see these days comes from Mexico