I also had these bones soaking in a bucket of water for the past couple of weeks and thought today would be the ideal time (since my kitchen sink was finally clear of dirty dishes!) to give them another scrub down before I throw in all my bones into a container tomorrow to get whitened. I am so behind on bone whitening it’s not even funny (three big cow skulls, vertebrae, random leg bones, etc.). I promise, promise, promise x100 to take before and after photos this time. I am using 20-volume hydrogen peroxide, not too powerful but I think it should still be easy to get the desired brightness.

I bet your Canada Day celebrations were more eventful than mine, but I’m a-ok with a day of playing with bones.

His teeth came HOT GLUE GUNNED in, which I really, really dislike as you can see the glue, even white craft glue would have been better to use than hot glue!

I will most likely document “the process” later in great detail, but for now, here are some bones I found before cleaning them, note the really cute skulls!!

After using a toothbrush and warm water to get the delicious furries off I then soaking them in hydrogen peroxide (for whitening purposes) for a couple days this is what I was left with.

I don’t know what to do with all the bones I have found so I usually stuff them in jars or use them for jewelry, if you can think of any fun crafts let me know!

A couple weeks ago I found this leg in a field outside of the city. From far away I wasn’t too sure if it was bones or a branches but when I looked at them from my binoculars I saw the hoof and knew it was a leg! I know it sounds weird but I think it’s really cute, especially with the little tufts of fur still attached near the hoof. I think the area I found it in was close to a coyote den as I keep finding new and different bones in the vicinity.

I realize I am behind blogging as I have a backlog of photos I need to share, sorry I am terrible!

I got a little bit lost trying to find the coyote carcass as I had entered the field from a different direction than last time. I abandoned my bike for a bit and walked around trying to find him. Here is my bike abandoned in the middle of the field, doesn’t it look lonely?

Anyways, after a bit of wandering I finally found him a couple metres away from his original spot. However I knew I had the right general vicinity as his fur was strewn about. He looked much like my abandoned bike in the field.

There were so  many flies buzzing about and you can tell some animals have been picking at him. His fur isn’t as pretty as it was last time I saw him and I wish he would decompose faster (his skull is going to be fantastic to add to my collection as I have a coyote skull and jaw bone but they’re not matching) but I know I can’t rush the process, I’m just impatient.

(You can click the above photo if you want to see it in more detail.)

I also found a deer leg, which I am nicknaming “Bambi’s mom’s leg” as it’s effing adorable and still had some fur attached by the hoof, a new skull (I can’t tell if it’s a deer or elk) and some HUGE vertebrae. I will blog about these later this week so stay tuned (because I know you’re so excited haha)!

My legs hurt from biking and walking up and down hills in the prairies for like 4 hours. I think I need a massage…

Would you like to borrow my toothbrush?

This was my sink a couple weeks ago after a trip to the grazing fields west of the city. I am finding it very hard to remove the cartilage from spines that I find. I’m not sure if they will “rot” or attract bugs/yucky things and start to stink.

Even through maceration they don’t come clean completely.

So the process for whitening is pretty simple. Some people use salon grade hydrogen peroxide which is more powerful, but I find I like the white created by pharmacy grade peroxide, the salon stuff makes things TOO white in my opinion, but to each their own! Basically I had cleaned the skull and the bones by letting them soak in water for a couple days then scrubbing them with a toothbrush and a kitchen brush to get all the excess gunk off.

Let them dry for three days and then all you do put them in a plastic container (just large enough to place your bones in as the larger the container, the more peroxide you will need) and pour in the peroxide. I like using a clear container as then I can peek at it every so often and control how white they get, but this will “break down the peroxide” faster as opposed to a dark container if you are planning on reusing it for another batch of bones. There’s lots of bubbles at first, but they will disappear as your bones sit longer. Sometimes the bones will float so you may have to rotate them a couple times to make sure the sides sticking out get whitened too, however, with the salon hydrogen peroxide you can “paint” it on to your bones for full coverage (make sure you use gloves!).

The container is sitting on my kitchen counter with the cover on (even though they are clean they still stink a little bit). I will be sure to show you the final product when they have been whitened to my liking and I will probably reuse the peroxide for more vertebrae (I think I only threw in four vertebrae this time as my main concern was getting the skull whitened).

If you have any questions Google is a great source but feel free to ask me as well!

It’s funny because even though I spend a great deal of time there when I go, I have never seen any live animals, not one deer or anything! Lots of fresh poop and signs that I “just missed” an animal, but that’s it! For example, something was quite large and itchy and used this tree to scratch…

Anyways, so my trip last Saturday proved to be a good one for bone scavenging and finding dead things in general (that sounds weird I know)… After walking for almost two hours I was feeling a bit tired and frustrated that I never found even ONE antler shed… But then in the distance I saw something furry… I wasn’t sure if he was injured or just resting, but upon getting closer… He was dead!

He had a really thick, soft coat. But had two holes in his side, one was large enough that I could see his rib cage and there were plenty of flies that had called inside of him home. Yuck, I will spare you the photo of the hole. I love that he had a snarl on his face though.

I inspected the area around him a bit more and walked about 25 minutes to where I found elk bones on my last trip. Last time everything was ice and I was able to walk across this area but now that it’s spring and everything is starting to melt, there was a giant mini lake of water. Doesn’t this photo look fake?! It’s SO beautiful!

Across the “lake” where I found the elk bones was a deer skull and some vertebrae! I was pretty stoked on these finds. There was a really icky spider on the skull which startled me but after he had wandered away I checked it out. I am missing the other half of his jaw bone, I looked around but couldn’t find it! Sadface, but at least the skull was in decent shape and there wasn’t any leftover meat and only a very tiny chunk of brain had not decomposed.

And now I suppose the real work begins. I have scrubbed the bones and skull the best I could and need to purchase more hydrogen peroxide for whitening purposes. I am pretty stoked on my awesome deer skull, it’s a great size, I have yet to inspect the teeth to try and see how old he was and I plan on revisiting the coyote carcass in a couple weeks/months and hopefully he will still be there but decomposed!

Anyways, as you can kind of see from the nerdy photo, they are in pretty rough shape from being outdoors and surviving the rain and snow. I have been researching potential ways to “revive” them to their natural color. I don’t want to use antler stains as then I’d have to wait and order them, same with Potassium Permangante… Some people have suggested using brown shoe polish but I think I am going to try using wood stain as I have seen some nice antlers colored with wood stain!

I guess I will take better “before” photos, and will post a photo of the “after” when I get a chance to try it out.

In case you were curious, other presents I got included tickets to Yelawolf, Bushnell binoculars and $$!