Thread: Tanning, what do I do?

For a deer, as long as it's clean, cool and dry it should be ok. Sounds like you've scraped it well, so that's good - fat and meat will cause spoiling over time even if it is salted, and scraping is needed to remove membrane anyways. Unless you scraped so far that you're hitting the bottoms of the hair follicles and having the hair fall out in those areas on the other side, you're ok with how much you've scraped.

Deer aren't particularly oily, so no issues with oil in the skin going rancid and causing spoiling that way (happens in fatty animals like raccoons, bears etc), but fat on the flesh side of the skin can cause the same thing. Fat burn shows as the skin turning a very dark yellow or green tinged then black (not to be confused with the skin drying to a rawhide translucent yellow, that's a good thing). If the skin is heavily salted make sure it's got a lot of airflow around it - the salt will pull moisture in damp climates... can lead to the skin being damp, swelling, and small areas of salt migration allowing some slow acting bacteria to move in and slip the skin. Basically your goal right now is to make a clean rawhide - when it gets tanned you complete the process for turning it into a converted leather product, but as long as it's kept cool, dry, and neutral ph a rawhide will last a long time.

Edit - other things to look out for are animals and bugs. It's now a tasty chew toy for dogs, rodents etc, the salt just adds to the flavor. Birds sometimes steal fur or poo on hides left in rafters, leading to staining and rot. Bugs, especially dermestid/carrion beetles will eat the hide, so heavy salting reduces the chances of that, as well as spraying with a bug spray on the hair and flesh sides (some bug sprays are in turn lethal to your pets if they lick the hide when you aren't around).