Before the advent of chemical tanning of hides to make leather, animal skins were subjected to all kinds of strange concoctions to degrease and soften them. Urine, wood ashes, tree bark acid, and even ...

I’ve brain-tanned my fair share of deer, squirrels, groundhogs, foxes and sundry other creatures unfortunate enough to cross Route 9 near our farm and school in West Virginia; but the farmers market ...

THE PLAINS –– At the end of the cul-de-sac sits Talcon Quinn's canary yellow ranch, a home that her grandparents built decades ago. It's quiet and unassuming, and thankfully she has known the ...

ELK MOUNTAIN — The stripped hide looked more like a cotton rag than an elk’s skin. White and silky, it sat wadded in a gallon bag, soaking in a thin liquid of its own emulsified brain. Most animals on ...

BROWNING, Mont. — Kenneth Cook used a mallet and a chisel to crack into a pig’s skull in the gravel driveway outside his home on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in northwestern Montana. Cook planned ...

Michele Vasquez (left) and researcher Souta Calling Last sit with Charlie, a 4-year-old Labrador retriever trained to detect several scents for Working Dogs for Conservation. (Aaron Bolton for KHN) ...