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Dear All, thank you again for your kind comments.

Historic Bore, thank you for reporting on your recent visit to Ariège. For your information, marmots (‘murmel’ for our German-speaking peers) are not endemic to the Pyrenees; some specimen coming from the Alps were introduced in the Pyrenees just after WW2 and have since then colonized all the range. As you mentioned it they were a small game prized by mountain people in the Alps, probably until between WW1 and WW2, not so much for their meat but for their fat that was subsequently used for cooking. Nowadays nobody hunts them in France (to my knowledge), but I think that they are still hunted in German and Austrian mountains.

Tinker, hereafter is the process I use for cleaning skulls, however this is only one out of many:
1. Leave the full head unskinned soak in a bucket of water for c. 24 hours in order to leave time for the blood to get out.
2. Skin the head, do not remove any flesh and leave the lower jaw attached to the skull.
3. Immerse the skull (not the horns/antlers) into a mixture of water and soda crystals and bring it to boil (15/20 mn for a small skull such as deer and 30/40 mn for a larger one such as elk); I personally use 500 grams of soda crystals for 10 litres of water. Antlers or horns are not damaged/altered by soda crystal, which is going to soften flesh and tendons and make bone cleaning easier.
4. Immerse into a bucket of cold water and subsequently remove the flesh, tendons that can be removed easily with a pocket knife; remove also the lower jaw.
5. Bring to boil again, same boiling time and same mixture (clean one but same ingredients), then deep into cold water and remove additional flesh and tendons. I usually start at this stage to ‘work’ the brain with a piece of wire that I have hooked at one end and remove as much as I can of it.
6. I usually boil 3 times the skulls, each phase making remaining parts of flesh, tendons, etc, softer and therefore easier to remove. The less easy parts to clean being the brain and nose cavities.
7. Then I wash the skull with a garden hose at full pressure, with emphasis into the two above mentioned cavities.
8. I subsequently leave the cleaned skull to dry, either in my barn or tied-up in a tree in the orchard for a couple of days. You may notice at this stage that some blood may still drip off horns (not off antlers); in that case soak again in water for some hours and clean the blood with a tooth-brush.
9. Next step will be to whiten the bones. Tightly wrap the skull (not the horns/antlers) in white cotton rags that should not come above the junction between bone & horns/antlers. Pour a litre of oxygenated water into a large container and leave the wrapped skull in the container; the oxygenated water will slowly be absorbed by the cotton rags and subsequently get in contact with all parts of the bone & teeth that will be whitened. Caution, oxygenated water should not be in contact with horns/antlers as they would also be whitened. After some time (one night to one full day), take the skull out, unwrap and hang out for drying.
Wear gloves when using soda crystal and oxygenated water as both may harm your skin.

The last things I subsequently do are:
10. Gluing with fast bonding glue (e.g. Loctite) teeth and small bones of the upper nose that might be loose following the repetitive boiling process.
11. Brushing horns/antlers with a tooth brush onto which I have poured some drops of vaseline.

In case you won’t have time to start the full process just after the hunt, put the head(s) into your freezer (no damage to horns/antlers) and start when you can. Similarly, if you don’t have time for completing the flesh removing/boiling process quickly, simply leave the head immersed into a bucket of water between two phases (but change the water daily).

Side advice last, do not use your wife’s freezer and kitchen for this process - unless you want to risk an argument, and most wives don’t like it!

I hope this will help.

Louis

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