A couple years ago I got a nice buck and wanted to get it mounted. I dont like to part with my money, and wasnt going to spend $400 to $450 for a deer mount. I figured that if a taxidermist could do it, so could I. See below
I made a lot of mistakes, but my tale goes something like this.
After shooting the buck I caped out the head. If you have never done this, it is a real pain trying to skin around the gums and nostrils. I took the cape to my buddy who owns Angelos tannery in Clackamas. He tanned the hide for $75. I had to pay him an additional $12 to turn the ears inside out. After skinning the head, the last thing I wanted to do was try to split the ear full length without breaking thru either the front or rear of ear in the hide. I ordered a video on mounting whitetails, since I couldnt find one at the time for mule deer and I figured it couldnt be that different. [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img] I watched the video and said piece of cake. [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]
I drove to Lebanon to a place called research manicans. They are a very large seller of foam heads. When I got there I realized they come in more than one size. Hmmmmmm.... No idea of what size my deer was, I bought a medium sized one and took it home. When I got the cape back all tanned, I measured the cape trying to decide how big the head was in taxidermy dimensions. They measure the neck diameter and the dimension from the tip of the nose to the corner of the eye. My now shrank head seemed to about be the size of the foam head I bought. I decided when I got the hide stretched on the head, I needed a bigger foam head and went back and got the large size. I will never know what size I should have used because I tossed the caped out skull away before I knew I was suppose to measure it.
I watch the video one more time and took about 12 pages of notes I could work from as I did the work. I make a small frame to hold up the head so I could rotate the head around while I mounted the head. First you have to get the horns mounted on the foam. There is a lot of variance you can do with tipping the horns forward or back. I dont know if I got them right or not, but that was to be the least of my problems. Then you have to build up the eye area with sculpting clay, and get the eyes set. That was pretty easy, then I built up around the glands below the eye and the bse of the ear with clay. The instructions said to get the hide damp and stretch it around the foam head. I dont know what damp is, but if a little bit of water is good a lot must be better. I dunked the cape in a bucket of water for about 10 minutes. I hang it to drip dry while I coat the foam head with hide cement. I learned later, damp means to blot with a sponge. [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img] I pack the ears full of bondo and chopped fiberglass to make them hard and stay standing outright. I stretch the hide around the foam head and start to sew up the cut down the back of the head. All was going well, right up till the hide wouldnt reach around neck of the foam head about 1/2 way down. I have this way too wet of cape still dripping, hide cement all over the place and a hide that wont reach around the neck of the deer. It was at this point I knew I was out of my league, and the video didnt show any of these problems [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img] I stretch and stretch on the hide, until I get the hair wore off the neck where I was pulling with my hands. I finally gave up and decided to patch a triangular piece of hide into the gap that I couldnt get the hide to reach to. I end up splicing in a piece of hide on the back of the neck and it doesnt look to bad [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img] well maybe it looks like **** , but it is kind of out of sight, and that hair going the other direction is kind of a punk rock statement.
I finally get the hide sewn on and have a ton of hide cement now all over the hair on the outside of the hide. It is all sticky and looks like a matted piece of **** . A little paint thinner and I had most of the cement off the hair. You then have to get the mouth closed up and the hide around the eye looking good. You stick about 250 pins in the hide to hold it in place. I stretch the hide down towards the shoulder and staple it on the back of the mount. It is starting to look good at this point as long as you only look at it from the front.
I pack it in the house and drive a 16 penny nail in the wall of the front room over a floor vent and hang it to dry. The wife is packing her bags at this point. [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img] A couple days go by and it is looking good and feeling dry. I remove all the pins and think I have almost conquered a new profession with a 2 hour video tape watched twice. The next day I realized the pins needed to stay in a little longer. The deer head now has a sneer on its face. Some of the mouth has opened when the hide shrank and pulled the mouth open a little. One eye is now looking straight ahead and the other is off in left field. I try to strecth the hide back to where it needs to be, and re-pin it, no luck. I have a buck head with a sneer and a lazy eye. I didnt really notice the patch of white hair on its chest was off center about 1/2 inch to the side for a few more days.
As of today the head now hangs in the bedroom because the wife wont let me hang it in the living room, and the bedroom took a lot of begging, she mentioned the garage several times. I was looking at it the other day when I notice some of the hair has fallen out of the head around the ears. I am sure the paint thinner had nothing to do with that. [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img]
Moral of the story if you want to do some taxidermy work, be sure and get the right size head.
I did all the work for about $125 in materials which included the tanning cost. It only took about 4 hours for all the work, once I got set up and going. I think if I had another one to do, I would be miles ahead of the last one. Like most everything you gotta get your hands dirty to really understand how it is done. One of these days I am gonna do another head and it will look about 100 times better. It cant look worse, or so the wife tells me.
Maybe I should have started off with a rabbit or something small.
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