Smoking

You just lay them horizontally on the rack at the top of the tent, and then turn them over once in a while. You can also make the tent roof out of a skin or two, and they get smoked at the same time as the meat!

Andre Bourbeau

To waterproof the hide you must smoke it. Just get a good bed of coals laid in a pit and then throw rotten, punky wood on it and keep the flames smothered out. This can be done in a smokehouse (just throw a metal plate over the pit) or smoke can be piped up through the hide by a series of pipes proceeding from something like a trash can that is smothering out the flames. The series of pipes being a stovepipe, followed by a tube of canvas, followed by a tube formed from the hide itself and suspended over a limb to hold it all up. There are also wilderness, primitive methods of doing this. The hide does have to be smoked on both sides thoroughly. You can smoke it as long as you want to get it as dark as you want provided you keep it from getting too much heat. It is animal organic material like meat and will cook and be ruined as far as usefulness as material. Smoking also insect proof the hide and bacteria proof it. You can wear a shirt made from smoked hide and sweat all you want and it will never retain a body odor! This is also useful in hiding your body odor when hunting.

Benjamin Pressley
TRIBE, P.O. Box 20015, Charlotte, NC 28202, USA