Think I decided to consolidate turkey spurs and make a paracord rope of them. The thing is a lot of them are many yrs old and may be too far rotten to get cut and cleaned up. I’ve always just cut the legs off, coat in borax and done. I cut one of the old ones down to size yesterday and I could smell the rot and it looked pretty dried out like it’s too old to get the leg scales off and clean up. I planned on cutting them small, scrape skin off if possible and dip the whole thing in clear polyurethane. Anyone been able to clean them after having them sit around for several years??

Funny, I am thinking about doing the same thing. I haven't cut into any of them yet but I need to consolidate.

I always clean mine up after season so I have no idea about the old ones, I’d imagine the spur cap may come off if you cleaned the skin off legs but you could glue it back on, the rest is just bone so maybe it’ll hold up. I just spray over mine lightly with some clear spray paint

I have just started throwing mine away ha ha. Just keep the breast these days

You can still clean up the old ones if you want to put the time into doing it. You'll notice the bone color will be stained compared to one you kept frozen and cleaned up but don't matter for a rope of them. I cleaned up about a 20 for a buddy one time & some were prob 10-12 yrs old. He originally just cut whole legs off & dried out in his garage.

A lot of these are over 30 years old

Oldest is 36, youngest a little over a year. They clean up fine. Just spray with a little polyurethane

very nice!

I had a string like gobbler (not nearly that many tho!). They were in a shed and mice got to them. Plus they started flaking and looked horrible.

Very nice Birdcarver and Gobbler - mice got about 35 years worth of spurs I had 😀

Still got my mounted birds which were large spurred

I do mine like Birdcarver.

Would they still last a long time if you didn’t remove the skin/scales and just put polyurethane over them? Looks like a few of you left the skin on in pics but hard to tell

Some of these are 30+ years old. I have never removed the skin. I dip them in a stain/polyurethane mix. Some are darker than others because different stain colors over the years.

I always took the scales off like gobblers. Kinda grown tired of that. I just started leaving them on like the others this year.

I like em with the skin off, I just put em in the freezer till I get time to clean em up. It’s a little work but not terrible