Nicely done benp. The first bird I ever mounted was a wood duck, I was probably around 12 years old, and way above my ability. It was still in my dad's house when he died in 2017, it was about 45 years old, black marbles for eyes. At the time I had a taxidermy book written by Richard Schmidt, the local museum taxidermist at the university. My dad taught in the next building and took me over to meet Mr. Schmidt. It was a real eye opener. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL4928792M/How_to_mount_birds. He was an old German man with huge hands and even then it impressed me with the specimens he had of quail and killdeer chicks in the museum.
June Workbench
- Thread starter Michael McCord1
- Start date
Thank you Don, the first thing I mounted was a blue goose "shoulder" mount. The breast up with a dial rod for the neck and clay for the head with black marbles for eyes and kept the real bill.
A friend who was like a second granddad to me gave me a book about taxidermy after that and the first true mount was a wood duck for my brother. He still has it and that's been around 17 years ago. The book was really outdated for modern taxidermy with wrapping the bodies and necks and using the real bill that I don't know of anyone doing unless it's for museums with odd birds.
Oh the memories, Tow to wrap necks (raw burlap) and excelsior to wrap bodies. It was always a big score when something was shipped to the house packed with excelsior. Using a spoon scraper that was hand fashioned with a file to give it teeth. I did a lot of deer heads and largemouth bass being in Southeast Kansas. I still have a pheasant mount from 40 years ago. It must have been a 70 yard hopeful shot and only one pellet, but in the right place. I started calling my shot the near miss method of specimen collection. I hand carved my fish bodies out of foam 50 years ago, if I had only known where that would lead. Eventually I started doing fish reproductions, carved with sugar pine.