Taxidermy Tips That May Help

A lesson I learned a couple years ago was when I got a call from my taxidermist telling me that he couldn't save the hide of bear that I had shot. As is often the case, my son and I had hunted on a long weekend and were an 8-hour drive from home when we finally got my bear. We drove home and immediately got the meat to the butcher shop for processing. While I had taken care to refrigerate the bear meat, it hadn't occurred to me to refrigerate the bear hide too. Sure enough, my lack of attention, to taking care of the hide caused it to spoil and cost me a nice bear rug.

A few weeks earlier I had watched as my son got a nice bear, which we got to the taxidermist without any delay. Every time I look at my sons beautiful bear rug, it reminds me that bear hides need just as much TLC as the meat.

The art of Taxidermy is probably almost as old as the human race itself. Archeologists have found ancient Indian duck decoys in caves around the Great Basin that were made from preserved duck skins stretched over a tule decoy body. Those ducks aren't all that different from the mounted ducks I see in hunters homes and offices today. A taxidermy mount can help remind you of a hunt just last year or of those long ago. Although mounting a critter can be quite expensive, it can last you a lifetime.

My Dad was once fortunate enough to catch a really big Brown Trout along the Merced River just outside Yosemite National Park. He had it mounted and the taxidermist did a great job with it. Every time I went into Dad's den, and saw that trout, it reminded me of the smile on Dad's face as he walked down the shoulder of the road back to camp with that 5 pound trout. Dad is gone now, but that darned stuffed trout still brings back a smile.

If you are fortunate enough to be successful in your hunting or fishing expeditions, you might want to consider having a taxidermy mount made. Interestingly enough, your stuffed critter doesn't have to be a monster trophy. It can be your son's first bear, or your daughter's first deer. It can be a crappie from that spring vacation when you rented the houseboat on Lake Don Pedro and the kids had a blast catching a tubful of fish with minnows and bobbers. I have a raccoon hide on the wall of my garage that brings back memories of the family dog fighting that coon in the garage. For months we couldn't figure out why the cat was getting so skinny until old Buddy caught that coon stealing the cats food and put a stop to it.>>>>>>>>>>>View The Source

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