How To Do Taxidermy
by Reimond Grignon
This is a very popular question around my shop when people come so I will give this question a shot. But where to start?
Of Course! A customer brings a mountain lion into the shop for me to mount. That should be interesting, and if you can mount one animal, well the rest are done about the same way....give or take..... so let me give this a try.
But first, since a lot of my work deals with professionally tanned animal hides and capes it would be to your advantage to first read the tanning page I have on this site so you understand what exactly I'm working with.
I wasn't exactly planning to make this page, so to get the appropriate pictures from beginning to end I have had to use various different animal photos I had. About 1/3 way down I will put on the mountain lion pictures.
First I am going to show you some pictures of a quite dead large Bobcat to be mounted, some skinning pictures, then after that I will show you some interesting pictures of mounting a Mountain Lion. All animals are done about the same way...
Next, you are going to see some pictures of a skinned out animal.... Just giving you a fair warning.... Most of this long page will be pictures of a mount in progress. To do that I need to start at the beginning. The first pictures won't be pretty..... There will only be a few of these.
The hide below is from the large bobcat that I have just skun out.
All the animals, deer heads and other critters, are brought into the shop un-skun
To get the best possible mount it is best if the customer takes real good care of them, and, brings us a really good prime animal or bird to begin with. And then don't try to help me! Some people want to help me by washing the animal, bird or fish. This can result in you harming the specimen and making my job so much harder. If you can't bring it in right away, just place the specimen in a plastic bag and freeze it and bring it to me frozen.
After the animal is skun out, it will be fleshed of all fat and meat, then salted down with at least 1/2 inch of salt and left for 2 or 3 days in my salt shed to cure. Then it will be hung up to dry. Next it gets shipped to my tannery out west. The tanning and shipping back and forth is now quite expensive.
The box above is not very big. About 18 wide by 22 long by 14 inches tall. It holds two smaller deer capes or one really big one. (raw, salted, dry hides) The tanning is not cheap and the shipping is now very expensive. I show you the shipping tag below of just the price of shipping this box one way out west to the tannery, and it don't matter weather this box weights 2 lbs or 35 lbs, the price is the same. Over that weight the price goes up...Most people don't believe me when I tell them MY costs of doing taxidermy work today. The prices are almost identical between all the carriers and the post office.
This next picture is of the skun out Bobcat. Hopefully this does not offend any one. Please keep in mind all animals used by man are eventually skun out and taken care of. This is how you get ham burgers, nice steaks, woman's purses, high quality shoes, and of course your pants would fall off with out a nice leather belt!
This next picture shows how I measure the carcass. In this case the animal measures 32 inches long from the end of the nose to the base of the tail.
I need these measurements to make the body I am going to use to mount the tanned skin on.
Mannikins can be brought as well, but almost every one of them has to be re sculpted to make the animals tanned hide fit.
It can be very, very difficult to do this at times. Almost every animal is a different size, or the customer wants the animal mounted in a pose where there are no such mannikins, so I have to make one.
I take many measurements of an animals body like you see above, not just for me to use to make the mannikin. As you see above, I have the customers number on most of the pictures. Cats come in all sizes as well as Fishers and other animals. When a customer brings one into the shop it takes a year for me to get it done with all the other work I got to do. During that time the animal keeps getting larger and larger in his mind. By the time he gets back to pick up the animal, the critter in his minds eye has grown just about twice the size of the original raw animal. Now I have photographic proof of his original animal and he is welcome to see these pictures, haul out his tape measure, (hey, I'll give him mine) and compare the finished animal to the mount I made. I make darn sure they match or or even larger. This is a problem with some customers. Well, This is my "cure".
You can see in the picture above that when the tape is applied over the skin, the skin adds about two inches to the diameter. One way or another my finished mount is always going to be some what larger.
The two pictures here, above and below are of a beautifully tanned Elk Cape as done by my professional tannery out west. These skins are soft and very flexible. They are a pleasure to work with and when mounted the mounts last for many, many years. Your grand kids will inherit your mounts. All my work is done the same way....
The picture below is a close up of the tanned Elk cape. It shows the head. I have already worked on the cape. The ears have had the cartilage removed, eyes have been trimmed around, the lips are ready, all bullet holes have been sewn. This cape is ready to be mounted on a mannikin.
Some manikins I make due to unusual poses, others are modified, and some are brought from taxidermy suppliers such as this one was. These mannikins are now very expensive. This one costs well over $100.00 plus a large shipping fee to get it to me. If you don't get the size right you just have to re sculpt it, or buy another one. There is absolutely no returns on manikins. And even if there was, you might just as well keep it as the return shipping fee is going to eat you. The business of taxidermy has many problems right now due to high shipping fees, and high mannikin prices. Many, many taxidermist have gone out of business recently. Everything just plain costs so much now!
The two pictures below shows me fitting the tanned bobcat skin onto a bobcat mannikin. Once I know the skin fits I will spend a long time sewing him up. All the stitches have to be very small. I make sure none of them will be seen. This is a very time consuming task.
OK now lets move on to mounting that mountain lion I told you about.
Before I mount any animal I want to have the base made for it. I have already made the manikin and now I want to make sure everything is going to fit when I get the lion all sewed up. So the base comes first. I make them for my customers because I try very hard to keep the price of my mounts down, but it is so hard now a days. If I had to buy these bases for my customers it would cost them many hundreds of dollars plus the very high freight fees. Big bases don't go by parcel post or UPS! Besides I can make a nicer one. I've been doing this for years... The picture below shows the beginning. The base is quite long. Its got to fit the cat!
Here you can see the form test fitted onto the base. I will talk about the cat form below. The wooden base has been stained and finished. I will keep this bottom part very well protected from now on until the cat is done. The wooden cribbage work I built, I will use to make rocks for the cat to stand on. Almost all animal mount bases are done the same way seen here. I try to give my customers the best base possible.
The picture above shows the manikin made and placed in position onto the base. It costs several hundred dollars for one of these mannikins plus shipping and no returns or refunds.
Notice the cuts I made in the mannikin. This manikin had to be remodeled very, very extensively to make it fit the lion. It took me a long time to remodel the manikin to make it fit the cats tanned hide, plus making changes in the pose of the cat. The picture does not show all the remodeling I had to make on the legs, head and some other places. This cat took a tremendous amount of work to complete. Much of which I didn't charge for.
The picture above shows the rocks I made on the base, and the rest of the finished base work. I like to have all the bases all made before the mount is finished if possible. Those rocks are extremely life like. You cannot tell them from real rocks even if you look closely. I try to do a great really good job on them. I make the bases for all of my mounts, but this takes an awful lot of time......
The picture above shows the original form with the wetted tanned mountain lion skin draped over it. You can see that no way in the world is the skin going to fit this mannikin. That mannikin costs several hundred dollars plus shipping and no returns. what's a man to do? A newer taxidermist would be lost right here. He can't afford to keep buying forms hoping one will fit. He can't return it. All, yes I said All, animals and the forms are the same way. Almost none fit exactly when brought. They cost a lot of money and newer taxidermist run up thousands of dollars on their credit cards before they quit this business. It has happened to many here in Maine, including the lady taxidermist that visited my shop one day that talked about it, and ended up crying in my shop over the thousands of dollars she had on her credit card...... She's also no longer in business.
Many forms do not fit very well as you see below.
It takes many years of experience to arrive at the point where you get brave enough to cut up an expensive form, re-sculp it and put it back together knowing that if you don't get it right you just blew through lots and lots of money.
This is a picture of the mountain lions front leg.
The tanned hide is being
test fitted over the mannikin.
You can see it don't fit worth a darn. Like the rest of the
cat I am going to have to
re-scult all the legs on this cat, besides the body and head.
Here you can see I have got it much closer to fitting. But it still needs much work. I have to do this with all the legs. It takes much time and effort. When forms don't fit good it is tough. I take in my work by the piece. For example. If I charge say $3000.00 to do this piece and everything fits good I make some money. Of course it isn't much anymore because I've already invested hundreds of dollars in this mount because of all the costs involved, tanning, Manikin, eyes, ears, glue, base making supplies, shipping, the list goes on and on...
But when the mannikins and hides do not fit, and I have to do all this extra work to make things fit, it eats up so much time that I don't charge for (i don't work by the hour) that it is hopeless to think I've actually made anything. In fact I can say right out that this mount took so long, I would have been way, way better off to have not taken it in and went and got a job at McDonald's. Not only that, but taxidermists who work for themselves don't get a pension, or a nice retirement check, or any insurances.
The only thing you get is the satisfaction of a job well done. But by George before you think about entering this line of work you better have your retirement figured out! I've been doing this for many years, and will stop doing it before too many more years pass. I've been asked if I would do it all over again. Looking Back, No way! I have loved doing this work over the years! But no body is going to help me out when I retire. So, I'll most likely work until I die!
So, I have showed you the basic steps from the beginning of mounting this mountain lion. I hope I have at least explained to you how much work, effort and time is involved in doing taxidermy work and making the above cat looking like the one below.
Other mounts are done the same similar way. Below are a few pictures I think you'll like.
Maine deer come quite large!
Moose are even bigger! And much heavier to work on.
This is one of my employees getting ready to mount deer heads. You gotta start em young.......
I hope you've enjoyed these photos and learned something.
If your an animal activist and didn't like seeing the skun out animals, or seeing something beautiful made from them, don't bother calling or e-mailing me with one of your sob stories.
I am old enough to don't give a D and won't write you back anyway.
Remember!
God killed the first two animals ever killed, and made coverings for Adam and Eve!
With out them they would have froze to death and you wouldn't be here!
