South Africa:Oasis Tanning Co. (Pty) ltd.
Contact: Andre vander Merwe
Plot 9 Dancornia
Brandvlei
Randfontein
South Africa
Email: Andre vander Merwe at oasistan@netactive.co.za
Phone: 27 11 416 2270
Hide & Skin Preparation & Guidelines
Hides and skins from successful safari hunts must be treated with great care to insure their value in taxidermy mounts and in the making of leather. Once the animal has been killed, deterioration of the hide begins immediatley. There are skinners of safari animals who have great skill, and can remove the skins in the field with minimum damage. This is important in removing the skin from the entire animal.
Quality of hide care and cure are important equally for taxidermy work and for the tanner making leather for leather products. Stress quality, carefull skinning to your PH. Skin the entire animal, down to the hooves. The skins need to be removed with the minimum of fat and meat, insuring that blood and body fluids do not migrate into the hair. The hides should be cooled in salt brine or cold water, washing off blood and body fluids from the skin on both sides. The skin should then be salted on the flesh side with a very fine crystal salt, and allowed to drain. If they must be folded for transport, they should later be laid open on a bed of salt and re-salted, thereafter allowing the skin to drain. Once draining has stopped, the skin can be folded and prepared for shipment to the taxidermy or tannery.
Ostrich skins are especially difficult as the heavy layer of fat prevents the salt from reaching the skin and preserving it. The solution is not to flesh the skin too cleanly, but only scrape the heavy fat away from the skin, leaving the membrane intact behind the crown (central quill area). Fleshing too deeply results in holes behind each quill, especially if the feathers are not pulled. For leather making, pulling the feathers immediately after the ostrich is killed is ideal as the quills will swell and become round and proud. If conservative fleshing is done thereafter, and the skin is salted and laid on a bed of salt to drain, the resulting leather will be superior. Every short cut will compromise subsequent leather quality.
Further information is available at specialtyleather.com or through email at specialtyleather@qwest.net.
Hair-On Tanning Suggestion
If you request hair on tanning of your hides or backskins, proper trophy care and salting procedures must be followed precisely. Many a mount and backskin has been destroyed or otherwise compromised by improper skin preparation. Your backskins must be cared for with the same respect as that given to your trophy mounts...otherwise, hair-slip is a distinct possibilty. It is recommended that hair-on skins be salted and dried immediately and then delivered to your designated tanning company as soon as possible. Request that your skins be stored in a cool environment to maintain their integrity.
If you can rely on your African or other overseas crew to properly care for the hides that you wish to be tanned in the U.S. with hair-on, it is advisable to have those preserved hides shipped to your U.S. taxidermist along with your trophies and then request that the leather be tanned by a leather quality tannery here in the US such as Specialty Leather. (Specialty Leather does not do taxidermy, tanning or fur dressing). Once again...quality of hair-on skins depends heavily upon immediate in-field care of your skins by your professional hunter's crew.
Trophy And Hide Shipping & Custom Brokerage
Having gone through a nightmare ourselves in 2005, we would like to help you avert excessive expense and multiple charges.
In July of 2004, I took a very fine old Cape Buffalo and a couple other trophies in Botswanna. I requested that the buffalo back skin be tanned a specific color by a South African tannery and that the skin, along with my trophy shipment, be sent to my US taxidermist's fur dresser in Texas. I specifically requested that the shipments be coordinated to allow the tanned hide to be shipped with my trophies. This didn't happen. End result: I had to pay a custom brokerage fee of $1,400 to clear my trophies in March of 2005. Finally, in August, I was informed that my Cape Buffalo backskin was ready to ship and to please transfer funds, $423 US dollars to the tannery's account. Which I did. I then received another email telling me that I owed another $305.40 for door to door service that would get my backskin home to Wisconsin. I went back and revisited the original request for payment. I discovered that I was quoted tanning and door to door service as beng included. I felt $728.40 was a bit excessive for a Cape Buffalo backskin. That's when we began researching better... more economical methods of delivery.
Enter Fauna & Flora:
We have worked with Fauna & Flora, Customhouse Brokerage out of Jamaica, NY, on several occasions. In talking with John Meehan, I discovered Fauna & Flora put into place a unique low cost shipping option for US hunters a couple years ago,... consolodated containerized ocean shipments of trophies.
Their new service offers US hunters huge savings...up to 60%. Fauna & Flora is bringing in several containers of trophies and hides every week. As hunter's trophies and hides are collected, the containers are filled to capacity. 21 to 28 days later the 40 foot containers arrive in the US at which time Fauna & Flora representatives break bulk and carefully distribute individual trophy crates to their rightful owners. Simple. Easy. Well managed. And a good deal besides.
Check out Fauna & Flora's web site for more detail. Fauna & Flora Click to Enter
We recommend you contact John Meehan prior to your safari to coordinate taxidermy shipments, (if done over there), trophy shipments to US taxidermists and tanned back skin leather shipments. Ship it all together for one low price.John Meehan III
Fauna & Flora Customhouse Brokerage Co., Inc.
152-31 135th Avenue
Jamaica, NY 11434
Email: jjmeehan@faunaandflora.com
Phone: 718-977-7700, ext. 111
Fax: 718-977-8230