x u x My back hurts.
Deer took a little longer to thaw out, apparently midnight last night still wasn't enough time to thaw it out until around 2:00PM when it was thawed enough that I could get to work. My first discovery was how tick infested this poor deer was. I could hundreds of bumps in the fur which I have to say this one is probably the worse tick infestation I've seen so far. I actually had dead ticks coming off that were bloated, it was a little disturbing. I'll be brushing those dead bastards out when its tanned up.
Fleshing wasn't easy, he had a lot of meat on him, my guess was I fleshed off 3 pounds of meat and fat probably. Fleshing also when well, maybe put around 6 holes this time? The down side was I discovered the deer has two holes near the eyes that are going to be tough to sew up, those holes appeared to be there when he was thawed out. I didn't finish until around 6:45 where I got off enough meat and such that I could salt him up. I probably should look into an easier way to flesh deer. Right now I hand flesh my deer with a little 6 inch knife, probably should invest in bigger knives and a bigger fleshing beam at least. I also discovered that it might be a real chance this deer might fit on a form I have, I won't know until he's tanned.
Sadly no pictures, it was a lot of work and mess. I'll trying to get some pictures of the final fleshing and tanning tomorrow. The weather is suppose to be better which will work out better, I didn't like doing this indoors. Going to see if I'm up for doing the chipmunk tomorrow too.
