Yea, soak them. I soak mine for a few days in a bucket. Boil it and pull some meat off. When Im finished for the day, I put it back in the bucket to soak. It will not hurt at all to soak them for an extended period of time. Once cleaned, the peroxide will bleach them out well and get all the small fragments off. If you do somethingg with antlers, you will most likely need to redie the bases of the antlers. You can use antler die, or brown and black shoe polish and perminate markers. The deer mount I did in the above post, was redied with shoe polish and markers.