Rendering and using Raccoon Fat

Description

http://www.selfrelianceoutfitters.com

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Dave Canterbury, David Canterbury, The Pathfinder School,Bush Craft ,Survival skills, Historical Lore, Primitive Skills, Archery, Hunting, Trapping, Fishing, Navigation, Knives, Axes, Fire, Water, Shelter, Search and Rescue

Tags: Bushcraft,Survival,David Canterbury,Dave Canterbury,Pathfinder,The Pathfinder School,Archery,Hunting,Fishing,Camping,Primitive Skills,Fire,Water,Shelter,Navigation,First Aid,Search and Rescue,Signaling,Prepper,Preparedness,Self Reliance,Survivability,The 10 C's,Knives,Axes,Saws,Bow Drill,Ferrocerium Rod,Ferro Rod,Tarp,Hammock,Canteen,Cooking,Longhunter,Trapping

Video Transcription

one folks I'm Dave Canterbury with self-reliance Outfitters in the Pathfinder school and we've got our fleshing beam here that we've been flushing off the hides from the animals that we've actually been taking off the trapline and we've released well over fifty percent of what we've caught we're only harvesting what we are going to use and that's what we did all during the class anything we've harvested we ate it we put up the fur and part of that utilization of the animal is rendering down some of this fat and that's what I'm going to show you today I'm going to collect up a bunch of this fat we're going to render it down and pour it into a container we're going to talk about some of the different uses for that rendered fat stay with it alright so we're going to collect this loose fat that's on its flesh and bean don't worry about if it's got a few leaves or stick something like that in it right now you can take that off later or separate it later right now just get the major chunks of fat in there and the major chunks of leaves and things like that out don't worry about the small stuff just get the little stuff out and you can use this to render down especially if you're using it for none ed ability or medicinal things like that you can render this down a couple days after the fact it's not a big deal all right so we have collected all of this into a pot for rendering and now we're going to just put this over a low fire we don't want to burn it but we want to render it down so we need some heat about medium heat is what we're looking for all right so we'll get us a fire started get things warmed up I got the high flames off to one side till I get things burning real good and I'll tuck it down in the middle there so I'm not getting really high flames on the pot itself let's start rendering that down that's gonna take a little while how's this thing cooking we want to come in here every once in a while and just kind of stir things around starting to already build up some liquid in the bottom of this thing that's a rendered fat like I said this is gonna take a little while I figured I'd give you guys a look what we're at with this you know I always tell people make everything that you carry around with you multifunctional I've got these traps udders for setting Conibear traps and I showed how to make a set of these trap spring setters but they make a really good grabber for taking pots off of the fire as well they lock in place so there's no way that pots coming out of there unless you want it to they're pretty heavy but if you're carrying them in a trap and camp already you might as well utilize them so it's uh take a look and see we're out here okay so again we've got a pretty good amount of liquid in here I want to I'll give you a close-up of this but we want to continually move this stuff around as we're rendering it we're getting about a quarter of a pot of liquid in here now it takes quite a bit of this stuff to render a good amount of fat I'll give you a little bit of a close-up look at that and then we'll get it back on the fire

one of the things I plan to do with this fad is make a fat lamp or just a quick grease lamp and so I'm just going to take a piece of this jute twine and start to make some reverse-wrap two-ply cordage out of it by figuring out which way they're already twisted and then twisting them in the opposite and over each other pretty simple quick process I've got a lengthy video on this and then I can twist this down and then double it over and do the same thing again to get how the thickness of wick that I want but this natural jute material if you've got some jute twine around your camp or some cotton anything like that will work as a wick as well as a lot of natural materials different types of fungus is different types of plant pests cattail fluff lots of those things will work as a natural wick but this will give you a more controllable wick that you can actually dip into the material very much like a candle wick when you're done and soak it with material and then put it into a wire holder to actually make a pretty nifty little lamp in a small mason jar and that's what I'm going to show you how to do with this rendered tallow when we get this done okay so we're just gonna take a jar this just happens to be like a mason jelly jar but it could be any jar we find in the woods and again multi-functionality of our gear we've got our trap line pliers and we've got our trapping wire so we can utilize that to help to make what we want here what we want is just a stand that will sit inside and we can just squeeze that circle down a little bit more just like that and then we want to stand to come up inside like us so if we can press this down just a little bit more it should kind of spring into the bottom of this jar when we're done just like that and then we've got this sticking up and this is what we're going to attach our wick to and we're just going to come over here and figure out about we want it and put a bend in it just like that pull this out we'll come out here and force this bend over just about like that and squeeze it down tell it's pretty close come in here and trim off our excess we've got a little bit of access wire that we don't need on there squeeze this down just a little bit more just like that and that's going to be where our wick sets inside here in the center so again we spring load that down in there we'll get this centered up just like this now we have a place for our wick and our wick is going to sit down inside here all the way down in the bottom just like this we can coil it up so that we can pull it up through as we use it and we're going to slide it into that spot that we just made there with our pliers to hold it in the center just like this and that's going to give us the body and shape of our lamp and now we're going to soak this wick really good in tallow before we put it in here and then we're going to put our tallow inside and when we're done we should be able to still put the lid on because this towel may not be solidified depending on the time of year how much heat and things like that you've got different types of fats that have different consistencies at certain temperatures beef tallow stays fairly solid at room temperature lard stays fairly solid at room temperature but the warmer it gets the softer it gets Coon tallow is very much like that the warmer it gets the softer that stuff's going to get so having a lid is convenient you can also use this same material once it gets a little bit solidified you can mix it with beeswax to make a waterproofing agent for your leather gear for your canvas haversack things like that for Reaper from your walk haversack you can use on your boots to help waterproof your boots or if you don't have beeswax you can use it straight and melted just like it is right now put it on a rag and start scrubbing down your leather with it and work it into the leather and will help waterproof it as well as protecting things like wood handles knife handles knife blades all those types of things can be dressed with this Tallis so it's a very very multifunctional item the lamp is just a bonus to show you that it can be used as a fuel as well alright so now what we're gonna do is we'll go ahead and put this in the jar because it'll be easier just to pull that back out of there once we get it soaked with tallow

so we'll just shove it down into the jar all the way for the moment like this and then we'll get this jar filled with some tallow and all we really need to do to do that let's get our container that's still liquefied a little bit warm again with it utilizing what you have a pair of pliers works fine for that pour that right down in there just like this you got more than enough to fill up a couple of these so what we'll do is we'll store some of this in another container and that will give us that much more versatility and that much more light out of the amount of towel that we can get from one raccoon or two raccoons I'd say there's probably a couple couple raccoons worth of tallow in that bucket right there from this class this weekend so now that I've got it in there and I've got it soaking the wick I'm not going to leave it in there until it solidifies because I don't want that wick to be stuck down and I got to pull the wick out so I'll get a stick and fish that out of there just a second as soon as I'm sure that it's soaked in and we'll stick it right here in our slit we can go ahead and light this lamp up while it's still not solidified and it'll work just fine now when we fish that wick up in there I just grab that loop and just drug it up in between there just like this and then pulled it over total is fairly tight and then pushed everything else down in because again this is going to start to solidify as it cools down so we'll wait talk it's a little bit more solid and then I'll show you how it works as a lamp or candle alright so there's our raccoon tallow candle burning in the wall time you can see that a multi-functionality of this stuff is unbelievable and utilizing the total resource of the animal you harvest is very very important that's a nice bright light for your tent and you know all the other uses from preservation of metal wood leather and canvas that you can also use this for as well so it's a very very good resource to understand how to again harvest manipulate and store all right guys one Dave Canterbury with self-reliance Outfitters in the Pathfinder school I appreciate you joining me today for a video on rendering tallow and some of the uses for raccoon towel out here on the trapline I thank you for your support and your views I thank you very thing you do for our school for family and for business for all of our sponsored instructors affiliates and friends and I'll be back with another video as soon as I can thanks guys