gar skin backing

[sonny]

I called a buddy a few days ago to talk about what's new- he told me that someone had given him a gar to skin, that the skin was so tough that he had to use tin snips to start the cut. When asked what he planned to do with the skin he mentioned using it for bow backing, expressing a concern about whether the scales would come off.
Anyone have any experience with gar skin ?? specifically for bow backing...
     

[Kegan]

An old friend of my father had made a bow once when he was in his twenties, and had backed it with gar skin he had gotten the year prior. he still has the bow adn the backing is still holding up remarkably. Tough stuff- like rawhide.

[mullet]

Hey Persimmon,Did your buddy eat the fish?If he didn't he wasted some good meat.The skins are like armor.Extremely tough and stiff.The Seminole's used to use the scales for points after they were ground down.

[Lost Arra]

mullet: how do you cook a gar?

[mullet]

    You first remove the two backstraps. The backstraps are boneless.Then I cut them into medallions like deer venison.Cook them like you would shrimp or lobster Scampi.The meat taste like a mix of the two.
    I also cut it into strips and soak it in garlic,salt and lemon juice.Then smoke it real slow into fish jerkey.

[tarsus]

I may decide to go bowfishing today!!!    David

[mullet]

   When my buddy and I go down the river shooting Gar,We usually drag the canoe behind us.We have a cooler with ice and just throw the meat only in the cooler.Away from the brew side of course.The easiest way we have found to clean them is to make a hacksaw cut,horizontal ,behind the head.And then one near the tail.Then zip it down the back with tin snips.Then with a fillet knife just cut the back straps out and throw the rest away.Unless you want the skin.We usually average about30 or40# of meat.

[medicinewheel]

please help me out: what's a GAR
can anyone post a picture maybe.
hopeless to find it in the internet, since 'gar' is also an often used word in german language 

frank

[welch2]

Here ya go Frank.

http://images.google.com/images?q=gar&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=x5k&um=1&sa=X&oi=images&ct=title


Ralph

[longfletch]

just dont eat the eggs in a gar, i read somewhere before that the eggs are poisonous to most mammals i know my granddad use to eat fish row/roe (sp?) alot when he was allive, i would eat brains and eggs with him but the fish eggs just looks "yucky"
bryan

[medicinewheel]

thanks ralph!

[Hillbilly]

Seems like someone wrote an article in PA a couple years ago about fish skin backings. I think one was gar, and he named the bow "Greta Garbow" 

[gpw]

Gar skin would be best suited to making a primitive quiver, you'd never run out of arrowheads...We made a few in the past , looked cool ...a handfull of dried grass kept the arrows from rattling around...

[Titan_Bow]

interested to see if anyone has any pics of a bow backed with gar skin.  When I lived in GA we used to shoot them alot, but never thought about saving them for bowbackings.    I would think the smaller ones, which seem to have much more spots ans coloration, would look really nice on a bow.

[boo]

i was out fishing with my dad in a narrow 12'' johnboat in the southwest creek in jacksonville n.c. and we hit a gar that allmost flipped us over. we had a 5hp motor and when the front of the boat hit the gar we thought we hit a log.the boat went out of the water and whne the motorhit the gar it flipped up clean out of the water,scarred the you know what out of us.i live in the mnts of n.c. now but id love to go chase some of those big gar.  bobby