By OutdoorClass Staff
Make sure to care for your animal in the field so that your taxidermy echoes the wonderful memories of your successful hunt.
Any hard-earned animal is a trophy. Whether it’s a record-book animal or your first-ever animal, getting it taxidermied in some form is all about preserving the precious memory that animal represents to you. Here are some tips to make sure you get the best-looking mount possible so that when you look at your taxidermy, the memories of your successful hunt rush back.
Take a lot of pictures. In their own way, pictures are 2-D taxidermy. They preserve the memories, and you can also use these photos to show your taxidermist what the animal looked like in life if you are planning on a shoulder mount or full-body mount. Some taxidermists may find these photos useful as a reference.
If you are planning on caping your animal for a shoulder mount, make sure to ask your taxidermist ahead of time how they want the cape prepared, and if it will be a few days before you drop it off, how they would like it preserved in the meantime. Be cautious about how you handle the animal once it’s on the ground.
Dragging it along the ground, especially when an animal has fragile hair like a pronghorn, can ruin the hide. When you make the incision around the middle of the back and belly, make sure you keep enough hide for the taxidermist to work with. If in doubt, err on the side of too much hide rather than too little.
Generally, when caping an animal, you make an incision along the backbone, up the back of the neck running up to just below the ears. The you make a “Y” cut that goes to the base of each antler or horn. Then you cut around the middle of the body starting at the middle of the backbone and circling the middle of the belly.
Then from the bottom of the belly, you cut up towards the front of the animal until you reach the front leg. You make a circular cut around both front legs just above the knee and skin up the back of the leg until you join the cut coming from the belly. Do your best to avoid nicking the hide with your knife when you are skinning out the cape.
If you are not saving the cape but plan on a European mount, skin the animal’s skull out and remove as much of the flesh as possible. Then separate the head from the rest of the body by cutting around the atlas vertebra.
Properly caring for an early-season velvet animal is trickier than a hard-antlered one. The antlers are bone underneath, but the velvet has a blood flow and it’s very fragile. When you are packing out a velvet-antlered buck or bull, try carrying strips of game bags to wrap around the velvet at the places where they touch your pack or might rub.
Then you need to preserve the velvet using one of many methods, including spraying, injecting or soaking with a preservative chemical, or freeze drying. Freeze drying is perhaps the most effective, but it is also the most expensive option.
Make sure to keep the antlers in the freezer if you are going to take them to a taxidermist but can’t do it right away.
Following these tips and using example videos from OutdoorClass experts and YouTube can help you be ultra-prepared for when you have an animal down. Remember, it’s always best to have a plan for what you will do with your trophy if you’re successful before you enter the field. Happy hunting!