Couple owns Kirby Creek Tannery

Mark and Liz Dean have purchased the tannery portion of the business from Merlin's Hide Out. The front part of the building and the store are still owned by Merlin's Hide Out and they are separate entities.

Kirby Creek Tannery currently has three full-time employees and a few others that are seasonal.

Liz provided a tour of the tannery and she described the different stages involved. When a hide comes into the shop, they get fleshed and then salted so they are dry before the tanning process begins. After this stage, the hides become rehydrated in a tank and then shaved. The shaving process is very physically demanding, being the tanner has to continue to lift and re-lift the hides as they remove materials from the surface with a circular blade. 

Bison hides are especially challenging because of how heavy they are. Once this stage is complete, the hides go into another series of tanks to get tanned. Next, they use special vegetable oil to apply to the hide and then roll it up, place it in sawdust, and then hang out to dry. This process is very important to keep the hide soft. One of the tools they use are tumblers which are about 7 feet in diameter and 3 feet wide. The tanners place the hides inside and they spin over a long time to dry them out, knock off the sawdust and still keep the softness.  

The process takes about six to eight weeks from start to finish for taxidermists. They can send 50 to 100 hides in a year. However, due to their large volume of tanning hides, the process can take six to eight months for regular customers. Most tanneries have a one-year turnaround time. Liz explained that there is a high demand for tanning. 

When it came to explaining how Liz and Mark got into the tanning business, Liz explained, "We were managing a ranch outside of town, and we loved it, but it wasn't ours. We like having our own business. We like being entrepreneurs. We like setting our own hours and being our own bosses. And so Merlin's Hide Out had talked about selling to us previously, just the tannery. We want the community to know Merlin still has Merlin's Hide Out. We bought the tannery, changed the name to Kirby Creek Tannery, and we're just leasing half of his building. Because it's a small community and Merlin wants people to know that they're still here, that is still that, this is us and that's how it is... When the opportunity came to have our own business again and we jumped at it."