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To the left of the photo is another coyote paw set waiting to be assembled. This one has been outside, rotting away for a
while. It is a front foot. The upper part of the paw has been scraped clean with a knife. The toes still need to be scraped
and separated. I use only the long bones and the claws for this project. The small toe bones will go elsewhere.
To the right is the finished piece. This is a hind foot. I had boiled this one clean and there was a lot of grease left
in the bones that leached through pretty bad, so I soaked the foot in turpentine for a few hours. It got washed in Dawn afterwards,
rinsed and dried for a few days. Then I used super glue to reinforce the metatarsal bones (those small, squarish bits at the
top). I then drilled a hole through for a piece of buckskin lacing so it can hang as a necklace. A hole was also drilled through
the bottom of each long foot bone and each claw. More buckskin ties them all together. The coyote's actual claws were left
on the pelt, so I replaced them with porcupine claws of a suitable size. The fur is a scrap of mink from an old fur coat.
The strip down the middle is a thin piece of rawhide wrapped in porcupine quills dyed blue and brown with Rit dye. All it
needs now is a cord to hang from.
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Notes on Cleaning Bones:
Bones can be greasy, especially if you try to boil them clean. The natural oils both inside and outside the bone tend
to leach into everything and cause stains.
If you boil your bones, try to remove as much fat and meat as possible first. This will prevent a lot of oil from being
present in the first place. Adding plain washing soda (sodium carbonate, not to be confused with sodium bicarbonate which
is baking soda) or a detergent like Biz, Tide or Dawn dish soap can help eliminate some of the oils which will come from inside
the bone. There are also cleaning kits available. A good one is made by Van Dyke's taxidermy supply and can usually be found
at/ordered from the local Cabela's store if you happen to have one around. It provides everything you need to clean and then
whiten the bones. This kit processes about three white tail deer skulls when used according to the included directions. Works
pretty good, too.
Another way to clean bones is to simply let nature do the work for you. Put the pieces to be cleaned in a place that four-legged
and winged scavengers cannot get to them but the little carrion insects can. I use an old dog cage in an out of the way corner
of our 14 acre wood lot. Any bones I do not have an immediate use for get tossed in for the creepy crawlies to feast on. Keep
the bones out of direct sunlight and slightly moist and those bugs will have every scrap of meat off of them in a few months.
The down side to this is the bones tend to smell like a dead thing for some time afterwards.
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