[reaperman]

Yesterday I helped out friend who collected 18 pallets of deer hides thru the local "Hides for Habitat" program. Each hide was previously thawed out, trimmed, semi cleaned, salted, and stacked on pallets. Thats quite a bit of work for a 75yr old guy to pick up the hides from area drop boxes within a 20 mile radius from sept thru dec. He volunteers his time, vehicle and gas money to due the above work. He gets occasional help but not very much. I had some free time earlier so I helped when I could. Yesterday the fur buyer came to pickup the hides. The driver brought a helper along to assist in loading the hides in the delivery style truck. It was me, the driver and his helper who unstacked every pallet hide by hide as Denny, the older guy counted them as we threw them into the truck. It only took us a little over a hour finish the task. We hit it pretty hard. The truck had an enclosed 20' box which was almost full to the 8' ceiling to the rear of the truck. There was a total of 927 hides and approx 750 tails. They buyer paid $4.75 per hide and all of the money collected goes directly to deer habitat. The hides will be shipped to Pakistan to get tanned and gloves will be made from each hide.

hides.jpeg (322.61 KiB) Viewed 980 times

[dbaxter]

Just curious, why Pakistan & not something in USA?

[reaperman]

Just curious, why Pakistan & not something in USA?

My exact question. The driver said there are too many regulations concerning the chemicals used in commercial tanneries. Therefore it’s more cost effective to outsource outside of the USA. He said they used to ship the hides to China, but the tariffs increased under Trump.