I rested for the next couple days, before moving onto the hide and the skull. I decided to work on the hide first, since that was at a greater risk of rotting than the skull. The ice was beginning to melt, and the air was getting warmer, so I took advantage of the warm, sunny weather to begin curing the hide. 

My grandpa had gone to a construction site, where they gave him a large piece of plywood for free. It was in the junk pile anyway, and was the perfect size for my pronghorn. After he did that, he helped me rinse off the hide. Because the guys at the camp just pulled it off like a sock, I had to cut the hide in half. I held onto it while my grandpa cut it down the middle of its belly. 

Once it was separated like a blanket rather than rolled up like a sock, I tossed it down onto the concrete driveway and used a hose brush to remove as much of the loose tissue, debris, shed fur, and blood as possible. My pronghorn hide had been soaked in blood, especially near the entrance and exit wounds of the bullet, so I did my best to clean that off without taking too much fur off. Untanned deer and pronghorn hides tend to shed really easily, so carefulness was key to prevent bald spots from forming. 

Once that was all done, my grandpa and I left it on some landscape rocks, fur side up, while we rinsed off the driveway, so no neighbors in that high end suburban neighborhood would freak out, and spent 15 minutes going to the store for salt and borax.

Target only had about 6 pounds of salt left by the time I got there, and to cure the hide, I'd need a total of 16 pounds of plain salt at least. Nevertheless, I decided I only needed about 6 pounds of salt for the first treatment anyway, and since the store was so close, it wasn't a problem to go there everyday for more salt.

We returned home, and for the next 4 hours, inside a closed garage next to a space heater so my fingers wouldn't completely freeze, grandpa and I stretched out the hide, fur-side down, using almost 60 nails, and cut off the excess meat and fat that had stuck to the hide. After that, we spread out the salt in layers on the raw hide and left the hide for the night to cure.