One trick for getting them soft is to take the heating element out of a dryer and tumble them with a couple of logs for hours until they are as soft as you want them. A buddy of mine tans hides all the time for his boyscout troop and let me in on that secret. If you don't like the scraping, yank the hide off with a truck or 4wheeler instead of cutting it off. It pulls right off without much, if any, muscle or fat to remove. I plan on keeping all of my hides from now on and have been kicking myself for not keeping my caribou hide this year. Of course, at the time it was a long hike back to camp and my pack was already maxed out