When I was a kid and a fledgling deer hunter, fur buyers would put out homemade signs that said “Buying Deer Hides.” Every November they popped up in every rural town. For a kid it was a big deal to cash in a deer hide after a successful hunt, and I got enough to break even on the cost of my hunting license.
Then, fur buyers began trading a pair of deerskin gloves for your hide. It was a good deal for the hunter who can always use a nice, soft pair of gloves. And it was a good deal for the fur buyer because he bought the gloves wholesale and an average deer hide could make three, maybe four pairs of gloves.
Across North America today, hunters kill about 5.5 million white-tailed deer in a typical season. Most of those signs are gone, so what happens to those millions of deer hides?
That’s the question Dan Schmidt, Editor-in-Chief of Deer & Deer Hunting, posed to me, so I set out to find answers. I checked with volunteer hide collection programs, taxidermists, butchers, a hide dealer, and even took to social media to ask what hunters were doing with this valuable raw material.
