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Quick and careful preparation of green hides dropped off by hunters is crucial to making everyone's conservation efforts pay off. There are three usual methods to care for green hides and preserve them until they get tanned.

1. Hides should be inspected for hair slippage, rotting or maggots, when the hunter brings them in. (if hair pulls out fairly easily from the hide, slippage has occurred.) if any of these occur, the hides are not acceptable or suitable for tanning.
2. Salting is the most common method used to preserve hides headed for "factory of chemical tanning processes. All meat and fat must be removed from the hide by scraping or cutting with great care taken not to damage the hide. Fine Salt works best as it rubs right into any remaining fibre on the inside of the hide whereas coarse-grain salt does not hold and tends to run or shake off. The entire hide must be salted right to the edges and while the amount of salt depends on the size of the hide, experts say to salt about 1/4 inch deep. Salted hides should be laid flat out, hair side down for a few days if they are to be folded into quarters or halves, till pick up.
3. Freezing hides is also a good method for preserving hides for tanning and frozen hides can be either chemically or "home" or smoke tanned. Salted hides, however cannot be smoke tanned the traditional way. As in salting, the hides must be scraped clean of all meat and fat before being folded into a large garbage bag which is then tied and placed in the freezer. To dry hides, the hide is nailed or tied along the outside edges only to a frame or sheet of plywood after it has been scraped clean of all meat and fat.