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Ask a taxidermist

Rodney

Rodney

Active Member
Joined
Oct 28, 2018
Messages
107
Hey all - I'm a taxidermist im SC. I've gotten lucky enough to work with animals in many countries. I've been on the large commercial side and small side of taxidermy. For a while I also had a big deer processing plant.

I see a lot of questions and sometimes misinformation out there in the internets.

Ask me any questions you may about about hide care, taxidermy, pricing, meat, processing, etc. I will be happy to try to help.
 
First, if you're a good taxidermist, thank you for all you do. If you're a bad one, for the love of all things holy, get better! I have good taxidermy and bad on my wall, and nothing is more expensive than looking at bad taxidermy every day.

As far as a question, what can I do or not do to keep a good taxidermist happy with me? Because I can live with a bad haircut and spit in my food, but I really, really want my taxidermist to like me. I have a deer on my wall that makes me shake my head every time I look at him. My first 8 point. I didn't know and couldn't afford any better, and it's been eating st me for almost 20 years.
 
valerio024 said:
How does a guy go about getting into Taxidermy? Is it best to go to one of the schools?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Start by finding out if your state has a taxidermy association and reach out to them. They should be excited to help you. Failing that I would find and order a few of the professional DVDs and just get started trying - be comfortable with screwing up. The schools/classes are good but I would want some amount of base understanding to get the most out of them. With taxidermy I feel you really can't even know what you don't know until you start.
 
Nutterbuster said:
First, if you're a good taxidermist, thank you for all you do. If you're a bad one, for the love of all things holy, get better! I have good taxidermy and bad on my wall, and nothing is more expensive than looking at bad taxidermy every day.

As far as a question, what can I do or not do to keep a good taxidermist happy with me? Because I can live with a bad haircut and spit in my food, but I really, really want my taxidermist to like me. I have a deer on my wall that makes me shake my head every time I look at him. My first 8 point. I didn't know and couldn't afford any better, and it's been eating st me for almost 20 years.
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I won't judge myself as good or bad but I will tell you that I deeply respect the animals that I work on and the trust of those who bring them.

Keeping a taxidermist happy? You've got it backwards. It's their job to keep you happy!!!!! YOU went out and made a memory. YOU were willing to trust its preservation with them. And YOU are paying! Find someone who values your hard hunting.

You can get your deer head remounted with a new hide and finally do it justice.
 
Rodney said:
I won't judge myself as good or bad but I will tell you that I deeply respect the animals that I work on and the trust of those who bring them.

Keeping a taxidermist happy? You've got it backwards. It's their job to keep you happy!!!!! YOU went out and made a memory. YOU were willing to trust its preservation with them. And YOU are paying! Find someone who values your hard hunting.

You can get your deer head remounted with a new hide and finally do it justice.
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I guess what I mean to ask is, what can I do as a hunter to give you what you need to make the magic happen? Tips on caping, hide care, etc.

I firmly believe every hunter should spend as much on a good scope as he can, and as much on a good taxidermist as he can.
 
Rodney said:
I won't judge myself as good or bad but I will tell you that I deeply respect the animals that I work on and the trust of those who bring them.

Keeping a taxidermist happy? You've got it backwards. It's their job to keep you happy!!!!! YOU went out and made a memory. YOU were willing to trust its preservation with them. And YOU are paying! Find someone who values your hard hunting.

You can get your deer head remounted with a new hide and finally do it justice.
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I get that, all good professionals garner success by word of mouth! But more specifically to @Nutterbuster point what are some things that make your job more difficult to help produce a quality mount???
 
Question, knowing what you know about deer processing, if you processed 10 deer and 2 of them had CWD what are the chances of all 10 being contaminated with CWD after processing.
 
Nutterbuster said:
I guess what I mean to ask is, what can I do as a hunter to give you what you need to make the magic happen? Tips on caping, hide care, etc.

I firmly believe every hunter should spend as much on a good scope as he can, and as much on a good taxidermist as he can.
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Ah gotcha. I'll respond as though we are talking about a shoulder mount of some mammal, in a fairly controlled environment (not backcountry etc), and know general skinning for shoulder mount.

From time of death of your animal race to get it skinned and cooling down.
Cut your waistline ring cut as far back as you can, the taxi can always cut away the excess.
Care to not nick the hide especially in the armpits, brisket, neck as those are the easiest places to make mistakes.
Cut your front legs off at the elbow. Cut the head off at the skull and leave the skull in, let your taxidermist skin out the head.
Once he's skinned get the hide on ice ASAP and get it to your taxidermist that day if possible - if not, freeze it. If you don't have freezer space then you need to keep it iced but DO NOT let it sit in the bottom of the cooler in water.
If you still can't get it to your taxidermist then you need to skin out the head, flesh the hide and salt it down but that is a whole separate topic.

That is really all I hope for as far as getting a hide to me. I either want to see that it is a fresh kill and cool hide, frozen critter, or properly fleshed and salted. The whole goal is leaving plenty of skin for taxidermy and fighting the growth of bacteria propagated through decomposition, heat, and moisture.

Hope that helps!
 
Bigterp said:
I get that, all good professionals garner success by word of mouth! But more specifically to @Nutterbuster point what are some things that make your job more difficult to help produce a quality mount???
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Customers whose vision outgrows their budget. You can't really cut corners on material in taxidermy and uphold a proper standard of work. Like the saying goes, 'you get what you pay for.'

Poorly treated hides. Once the hair starts slipping on a hide my enjoyment with the mount is 100% over and then I have nothing but anxiety and trying to save the hair. Slippage is the devil and cascades issues through the mount.

Cutting the hide too short. If it can't fit a standard form we are in trouble.

Mounting birds that have been shot to all hell. We have to recreate the wings and preform surgery on the thin bird skin.

I will add some more as I think of them!
 
I have heard that you should not spray the cape off with water and then freeze it.

Is it better to leave the hide bloody/dirty and freeze it or spray it off, let it hang dry a little bit and then freeze it?
 
gumby said:
Question, knowing what you know about deer processing, if you processed 10 deer and 2 of them had CWD what are the chances of all 10 being contaminated with CWD after processing.
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I didn't do processing in a CWD state so I never got any special training for it. But knowing what I know about how processing works - its extremely likely all 10 were contaminated through processing. You don't break down and clean machines and work surfaces until you are done for the day or you are switching the species of animal you are processing. So once CWD meat has gone through the operation, everything after that would be suspect for contamination.
 
sampotter said:
Have you ever reported an obviously poached specimen?
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I've never reported/seen outright poaching. There have been a handful of situations that I felt the animal was taken illegally but didn't have enough to go to get the law involved.

With processing I have had to get DNR involved several times.

After SC implemented deer tags we had a lot more communication with DNR because of untagged deer. Generally, DNR would was merciful to my customers because we maintained an open door policy with DNR.

We got a good many roadkill deer and DNR also wants to know about those. We can tell if its roadkill! Even if you shoot it with your pistol after you find it and attempt to say that you hunted it! Your pistol does not break every bone on the right side of a deer's body and bruise all the meat. Your pistol does not drag the hide off of the deer. Your pistol does not shatter the rack and break the neck. And your pistol does not cause the dead deer to age 48 hours before you brought it here. It was funny but could be aggravating too because the folks bringing in roadkill usually are very poor and just trying to get something decent to eat. But in order to legally process their deer I would have to call DNR and get a roadkill tag, store their deer away from the others (hard to do when the cooler has 150 deer in it already) so as not to let the bruised/stinky/dirtier meat be near my clean deer, and make sure to process it last so I didn't have clean deer following the roadkill on the processing line.

Also once had some guys bring in 4 un-tagged bucks that had the racks cut off and the lower jaw ripped out and seemed about 24 hours post-mortem. They obviously weren't hunters and I asked who gave them those deer and they gave me the name of a prominent figure in the area. I told them they were wrapped up in something illegal and that I was getting the DNR on the way and they took off. DNR seemed to know exactly what was going on when I called.
 
Nitrous Kyle said:
I have heard that you should not spray the cape off with water and then freeze it.

Is it better to leave the hide bloody/dirty and freeze it or spray it off, let it hang dry a little bit and then freeze it?
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I would just freeze it and let the taxidermist handle it unless you are planning a really long freeze time between time of death and when he/she gets it.

If it's extremely bloody you can spray it down and freeze it. I would brush it out before throwing it in the freezer though. The wet hide will freeze to anything it touches. So if you put it in the freezer wet it will be frozen to its neighbors, to the shelf, or to the bag you put it in.

The tanning process does the majority of your hide cleaning and generally as a customer you should have no worry about bringing in bloody hides.

Bloody white duck feathers can be more difficult sometimes.
 
I have never done this for a deer I mounted, but wondered if it is ok to use a winch to remove the cape. It produces a much cleaner hide to start with, but I was worried it would stretch the hide too much.
 
Where in SC are you? Im in Fairfield co. Are you still into processing?
 
Vtbow said:
I find this thread interesting, fun and a great break from the normal conversations around here. Thank you for starting it!

What was your favorite mount/stuff you have done and why?(could you share a picture?)
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Really tough to pic a favorite. Many of my favorite pieces have more to do with the customer or their experience than the mounting. I had this wonderful customer who hunted with his wife their whole life. She was in a tragic accident and was told she would never walk again. Every day she would fight and get a little better and a little better. She told her husband if I get through this we are going on an Alaskan goat hunt - very physically challenging. Damn if she didn't pull through, go on that hunt, and make a 600 yrd shot on a mountain goat.

Where they killed the goat there was this bright blue glacial ice. Recreating that was such a challenge and took so many attempts. I ended up dyeing resin used to make "ice" for drink commercials breaking it down and then putting it against the rocks then pouring more resin over to 'set' the ice and unify it. The end look was perfect - depth, transparency, color. Very thankful to those folks for the opportunity.

IMG_20171230_103745_264.jpg
 
Rodney said:
Really tough to pic a favorite. Many of my favorite pieces have more to do with the customer or their experience than the mounting. I had this wonderful customer who hunted with his wife their whole life. She was in a tragic accident and was told she would never walk again. Every day she would fight and get a little better and a little better. She told her husband if I get through this we are going on an Alaskan goat hunt - very physically challenging. Damn if she didn't pull through, go on that hunt, and make a 600 yrd shot on a mountain goat.

Where they killed the goat there was this bright blue glacial ice. Recreating that was such a challenge and took so many attempts. I ended up dyeing resin used to make "ice" for drink commercials breaking it down and then putting it against the rocks then pouring more resin over to 'set' the ice and unify it. The end look was perfect - depth, transparency, color. Very thankful to those folks for the opportunity.

View attachment 20893
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Wow Thats beautiful and that story is even better. Thanks for sharing
 
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