How Warm Are Animal Pelts?

Alsikepike

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I'm writing a story about a small group trying to survive in the wilderness in the middle of winter. I was curious as to how warm animal skins can keep you. The story takes place in the upper Midwest. The survivors come across a small herd of deer and manage to get a few before they all run off. I have experience in hunting, and I've seen firsthand how resilient deer can be to the cold. I was freezing by butt off in a down vest, a thermal coat, ski pants, and six heat packs while a deer I was watching was casually strolling around with a coat of ice forming on his pelt, and small icicles hanging from his antlers. In a survival situation, how useful can a deer pelt be? What kind of preparation do you need before they're viable to use? Can you use them temporarily right out of the gate? The survivors aren't fully equipped for the winter, but they have some basic supplies to work with, and a few tools. I'm not fully experienced with using deerskin for warmth, as I usually just donate the skins to a organization that makes gloves for the homeless. I've been looking online for information, but I don't have a solid answer on how effective pelts and deer skin are at keeping people warm. I've seen pictures of Native Americans using deerskin clothing, but I'm unsure just how helpful they were against the cold. Anybody have some advice on what I can do?
 
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cornflake

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Deer have higher body temps than humans.

I don't think that'd work -- I think it'd kind of rot?

Your threads are so gross; I do not know why I keep opening them and stuff!
 

JNG01

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Furs are very warm, tanning them is difficult until you get the hang of it. First, you have to skin the animal (easy part). Then, you have to flense all of the fat and muscle off of the inside of the hide, hopefully without tearing it. This can be tough and time consuming until you get the hang of it. After that's done, you now have a usable hide that will be prone to rot and the hair falling out. To make the hide durable (to stop degradation and to stop hair from pulling out), you'll need to tan it. One way is to cake the skin in salt for a few days to dry the skin out, then follow that by brain tanning (probably easiest for survivors in a post-apocalyptic world) or egg tanning. There are lots of different ways to tan, though.
 

neandermagnon

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Cold-adapted animals like reindeer have pelts that are better at insulating them (and you, if you kill them, skin them and tan their hide) than animals adapted for warmer climates. This is due to various things like thickness of fur and the shape of the individual hairs that make up the fur (there's something special about reindeer fur in this regard but I don't remember the details).

There are you tube videos that tell you how to tan hides, various methods, including ones that only use palaeolithic technology (which would be very useful to know in a survival situation where you can't get hold of any modern technology), traditional methods used by various people around the world (match the method with the geographical location, as you can't find all the same things in every environment) and also methods that use modern techology, but the ordinary person could do in their back garden.

How well animal pelts would insulate you therefore depends on the species. However, how thick/warm an animal's pelt is that animals adaptation to the specific climate it's in, so in theory, it should be warm enough to keep a human warm in the same climate. (Humans are mammals and various mammals have fairly similar internal heating systems.)

I write prehistoric fiction - regarding brain tanning, I avoid having my characters use brains for tanning, because brains are an excellent food source (high in fats, including omega 3s) and you can use various barks to tan hides (in fact the term "to tan a hide" shares an origin with "tannins" - substances found in bark). However, brains carry a risk of prion disease so modern people in a post-apocalyptic style survival situation would probably do better to use the brain to tan the hide rather than eating it, as long as they have sufficient food to survive without eating the brains.

Regarding keeping warm in a survival situation in a cold climate, here's what I learned in the Girl Guides (which is based on a British climate): 1. Shelter is vital. If it's snowing and there's no shelter at all, if you can, dig a hole in the snow to shelter from the wind - it works kind of like an igloo, but it's nowhere near as sophisticated. Wind chill factor will kill you much quicker than cold, still air, and ice/snow is actually a very good insulator (due to the air trapped between the ice crystals). Don't dig the hole so deep that there's a risk of the snow caving in and you suffocating to death under it though! If there's no snow, build a bivouac using whatever materials you can find that will keep the wind off you. Also, look for natural shelter, i.e. anywhere that's less windy, like slightly lower ground, or ground sheltered by rocks etc. 2. you will lose more heat through the ground than to the air, therefore you need to first consider what you will sit and sleep on, before you consider what you will wrap yourself in. The recommendation we learned in GGs is to have twice as much wrappings under you as over you. 3. huddle together to conserve body heat. You don't have to all be naked to benefit from this*, but in light clothing you huddle together then put the larger wrappings round the whole group - or in several small groups if there are lots of people. The more you individually wrap humans, the harder it is for the individuals to keep warm. 4. STAY DRY... wet clothing/wrappings massively speeds up heat loss. (On that note, a well-tanned hide will be pretty waterproof but best not to let it get completely soaked).

*babies and small children should be in skin to skin contact with their mother (or whoever the primary carer is, etc etc) and then mother and baby wrapped up together (obviously in such a way that the baby can still breathe) because they lose heat much more quickly than adult.

Also a fire will keep you very warm, but be careful of setting your animal pelts and bivouac alight and also don't die of smoke inhalation. Humans didn't start to live in cold places until after they figured out how to control fire. Getting enough fuel for a decent fire is going to be a limiting factor, so best advice is to do all of the above, plus have a fire.

Back to the original question - yes any kind of blanket or animal hide is good at keeping humans warm, but if that's the only thing they're relying on, then they're going to find themselves in a lot of difficulty.

Also, the above advice is for a climate similar to Britain's.
 

Alsikepike

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Very interesting survival tips, I'll be sure to look into them. (Also, the special fact about deer hairs you were thinking of is that all of the hairs are hollow.)
 

Thomas Vail

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The first advantage of a pelt is that it keeps the the wind out. That's one reason why the deer in your OP was strolling around so casually, because it had fur that was quite efficiently keeping cold air from coming into contact with its skin.

The second is going to be the skin-heated air trapped in the fur (that the wind can't wick away).

It's a lot better than nothing at all, not as good as say, a cold rated winter coat, but when all you have is a skinned deer...
 

lonestarlibrarian

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I don't have experience with deer, but I raise Rex rabbits.
Depending on your time and resources, you can tan a hide, you can pickle a hide, and you can have a raw hide.
A tanned hide is the best. That's going to be soft and awesome, like what you think of as a fur coat or a fur blanket.
A pickled hide is the step you do to get leather. It will set the fur, make it pliable, and give extra protection against, say, water. It won't be nuzzly-soft, but it will be a good start.
A raw hide isn't pleasant. There are membranes and bits of meat and blood on the pelt. I roll mine and put them in the freezer, but if they were to be left out in the air, I'd expect them to get stiff, smelly, and attract flies and other vermin. If they were kept for several days, I'd expect the hair to fall out in patches and be generally unpleasant.
 

Alsikepike

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Hopefully it's because you like learning about things you are unfamiliar with? It's why I post these. I love to chat and learn new things.
 
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Bolero

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One other thing with ruminants - some of their warmth comes from the ongoing fermentation in their stomach. With domestic animals you always feed some proportion of stuff like hay that they have to ruminate, not just high energy feed pellets.
 

SwallowFeather

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I've done braintanning, a little. It's heavy and skilled labor, easy to screw up, hard to learn even with all the instructions. Easier to learn from an expert, I expect, if they happen to have one.

Now what you normally make from a deerhide is buckskin—supple leather, hair off. TBH I am not sure just how warm buckskin is, but nothing like fur; also it doesn't repel water. In the braintan forums they all told me not to tan deerhide with the hair on. The hair falls out, due to its being hollow; if it's a decorative item, not getting wear and tear, it might last a few years before it does so. Also normally for a good supple braintan you have to scrape off the epidermis layer which stiffens. There is a braintan method for fur-on, usually for animals with fur rather than hair (not hollow.) I haven't tried it yet. (There's a raccoon hide in the freezer that my husband occasionally clears his throat at me about.)

From handling hides I would guess that in the cold you could sleep under a raw deerhide for a night, maybe two, before it became unusable. In the cold it would probably stiffen rather than rot. That can be undone by soaking, when you start the tanning process.

The warmest thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is dry grass, straw/hay, or dry leaves. If you can find one or other of these materials in the woods or under the snow or something, pile it on top of you as high as you can while you sleep. The air trapped in the spaces between the stalks or leaves will insulate you. It's surprising how good this is. Mice live all winter in nests made of nothing but dry grass and shredded-up dead leaves, and when you look at those nests you can see what care the mouse took to thread the materials together loosely, with insulating air between them. They also put them in the center of a brushpile or something if they can.
 
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Beanie5

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This works short term, find a cleft in the rocks.
break branches with leaves make a floor between rocks with these and put down what insulation you can
put more branches with leaves across to form roof , cover with snow , sleep close together and put your feet inside the clothes and on the stomachs of those with you.
STAY DRY, START A FIRE if you can. Dereskins are for show keeping wind out, but you need food, biggest problem by far is staying dry. p.s. don't sweat!
 
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