All of us keep things around to remember a special moment. People assign value to things that remind them of a special event. We regularly stash tickets or programs from events we want to remember, and I surmise that bones adorned most ancestral dwellings. Bears are interesting critters and we take a lot more of them out of the field than we do with other game. While fleshing and tanning the hide is a chore you probably don’t want to take on (even if you knew how), a bear skull is a great and pretty easy Do-It-Yourself project. 

One of the tough parts about working with a bear skull is the same thing that makes working with a hog skull difficult: they’re greasy! Luckily, Rich Geres from Eastern Sky Guiding in Southeastern Saskatchewan told me the best way he’s found to degrease a bear skull on my hunt with him in fall 2024, and I’m going to share it with you (with his permission, of course). 

The method is really easy. You begin by filling a five gallon bucket with outdoor cooking fuel and put the skull in it, then let it soak. The fuel draws the grease out of the skull. Now some skulls will have different levels of greasiness, but Rich told me that with a bear skull 16-18 hours typically does the trick. I’ll give you a quick word of caution: the gas is very spirited with its strong vapors, so keep your setup outside. You don’t want it on your skin either, so I suggest placing the skull in a bucket with drilled drain holes inside a different bucket filled with fuel for easy removal. 

This degreasing method is one of a three step process. Step one would be to clean the skull through whatever method you choose (beetles, boiling, maceration, sous vide, ant hill, etc). The degreasing process discussed above is step two. Step three is to whiten the skull, typically with a strong peroxide-based solution. After that is when your creativity can shine. On my skull, I chose to remove the teeth so they would retain their natural color. This is optional and purely aesthetic. 

I hope this DIY project is useful to you if you decide to keep a skull memento from your future hunt(s). It requires some extra care, but it is a straightforward process and not very time-consuming.