European mount help

cz858hunter

cz858hunter

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the s*** end of ontario, but my soul is still up i
so this year i was lucky to bag a big 7 point whitetail. It's my 7th deer and my first buck. I want to mount the skull or a European mount as some call it. any body have any tips as i have seen attempts at this go wrong. I still have the whole head with the hide still attached. still has the "contents" of the head in it to.
 
im doing one with a ram head, and just got done boiling it for a few hours, it cleaned nearly everything off but i think giving it another go wouldnt hurt. be warned i dont know how the deer will smell but this skull stunk, i nearly lost my lunch when checking it and the steam came off it.
 
Like Dogleg said, unless you have lots of time to devote to it. You'll get less shrinkage with the dermacide beetle treatment than a stright boil if it matters.

If you want to do it yourself do it asap, get all the greeblies off much as you can and cook it in the tank with cascade or electrosol dishwasher crystals to displace the fatty goo that comes to the surface. Might not hurt to saran wrap the antler bases and tin foil them shiney side out to see if it helps reduce the loss of the tree sap deposits or having it all melt into one even coat.


im doing one with a ram head, and just got done boiling it for a few hours, it cleaned nearly everything off but i think giving it another go wouldnt hurt. be warned i dont know how the deer will smell but this skull stunk, i nearly lost my lunch when checking it and the steam came off it.
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Derek, if you cut off a third of the horn cores you will find it a very porous structure which can and will hold alot of smelly goo. The one I cleaned did not stop smelling until I trimmed the ends to allow a better bath. Just in case you hadn't tried that yet.
 
The local beetle guys here in Saskatoon charges $120 for a deer head, money well spent. By the time you add up your time and supplies (heat source (20lb propane tank typically), hydrogen peroxide, brushes and dental picks) you're earning little more then $10/hr and will blow through half a day or more.
 
Here are a couple of mine. Very easy to do and turned out great! Took them to my taxidermist :)

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Cinch said:
The local beetle guys here in Saskatoon charges $120 for a deer head, money well spent. By the time you add up your time and supplies (heat source (20lb propane tank typically), hydrogen peroxide, brushes and dental picks) you're earning little more then $10/hr and will blow through half a day or more.
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Did you get yours munted on a wood base, wall mount? I got mine cleaned in Meadow Lake for $75 but want to mount it to the wall.
 
I've got 4 musk-ox skulls sitting at Skull and bones, out by Grandora. Some things are more trouble than saveing a couple bucks is worth. Hell, its hard to find time to even pick them up, never mind do them myself.
 
thanks for the tips, don't think there's any "beetle guys" near me but i'll check with my taxidermist. cash is tight as i'm trying to put a car on the road but if it's not to bad i'll pay to have it done. I just wanted to see if it was easy to do yourself.

beautiful trophy wall by the way sksavenger
 
I did my deer in an outdoor turkey fryer.
I skinned the head and with a fillet knife carefully removed as much soft tissue as possible after work Friday.
Used a long nose compressed air nozzle to blast out some of the brains after giving them a stir.
Put head in pot of water with dish soap and GENTLY simmered for 3 hrs.
Removed head and used a tooth brush/fine wire brush(dollar store tooth brush size) to remove excess flesh.
Changed water/ dish soap and continued to GENTLY simmer for 3 more hours. Then let it cool naturally in the garage over night.
Tooth brush treatment again.
In the morning, wiggled out the loose teeth/ ear canal bones, nasal bones/sinus webbing and put in a ziplock bag for safe keeping.
Continued GENTLY simmering and changing soapy water and tooth brushing,scraping until Sat night. Gently blew off with compressed air.
Then I placed the skull and all the teeth,nasal bones,ear canals,sinus into a bucket and poured a dozen or more(enough to cover skull) bottles of dollar store hydrogen peroxide into the bucket of bones and left over night.
Sunday after noon I removed the bones and let air dry on news paper. Then with some Welbond white glue,a tooth pick glue applicator and some patience I put the puzzle back together.
NOTE:
You want the heat high enough to pull the oils out of the bones but not too hot or the teeth will crack into pieces!
The dish soap needs to be the liquid kind (DAWN)and is used quite liberally.
NOT dishwasher soap or oxy clean!!....unless you don't like your aluminum turkey pot. Some people suggest this and I did a coon skull like this and discovered that both of these chemicals will start attacking the metal pot, now a stainless or enamel pot MAY tolerate these chemicals but I haven't tried it.
The Hydrogen peroxide will dissolve any remaining oils and light fleshy bits and make the bones WHITE WHITE WHITE, with no funky smells from your trophy later on.
Be careful when dumping out the old grungy water when changing, you may accidentally toss out a tooth or other small bones that have come loose in the bottom of the pot.
This is an outdoor project due to the bad smell and large amounts of steam.(Imagine cooking pasta ALL day with your old rotten gym socks thrown in there!)
Cover top of pot with tin foil to keep water from evaporating.
Keep skull below the water.
Skim off scum from time to time and add more water and or dish soap as needed.
 
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Fremen said:
Has anyone done it the natural way?
Mine is still hanging in a tree.
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I have done some by cleaning off as much as I can then burying them in a large ant hill, use some wire to attach it to a tree/post to prevent scavengers dragging them away. After a year or so they look pretty good, a buffalo skull took 3 years for my neighbor.
 
For a whitetail, I would advise against the "ant hill method". A friend of mine tried it (against my advice) before he finally brought the rack to me. Four problems:

1) Unless you're in some tropical jungle, ants aren't much in the way of meat eaters. The flesh came off through almost a year of plain ol' decomposition.

2) The skull still smelled. Bad.

3) The antlers (exposed to the sun) lost much of their brown colour.

4) The buried skull had turned yellow and was a b!tch to whiten with peroxide. I never did get it as white as I could have if it had been a fresh skull.
 
Hunting in AB with my Daughter & Son In Law, my Daughter did a European mount for me on my first AB Mulie. All the Deer back there look like monsters compared to what we have here on the island. It was a decent size, had a little 'junk' on the head gear but it was a special Deer for me in that it was my 1st hunt with my Daughter, my 1st AB Mulie and I got it with my recently deceased Fathers 30-06 Husqvarna light weight.

Erikamewithmy1stABMulie.jpg


1stABMulie.jpg


She went through a lot of work on it and did a good job but I'm not sure on the method or procedure she used. I'm happy with the results though:D.
 
Done two so far. One on the stove, the other outside on a Coleman stove (He's a learner! :) ). Pretty sure I only ended up using two fills of the tank with naptha.

If you can heat up a pot of soup, you can do this and have good results.

Some soap in the water (I used dish soap) and don't get the heat too high, and it'll be fine.

I'd suggest at the minimum, a package of bamboo skewers (for picking and teasing out the sinus bits) and a long reach small diameter bottle brush (for the brain cavity).
Last one I did came out pretty nice. Only punched one small hole in the sinus spirals with a skewer. Better luck (and more patience) next time.

I never bothered with peroxide. I figure they look pretty good.

Cheers
Trev
 
ninepointer said:
For a whitetail, I would advise against the "ant hill method". A friend of mine tried it (against my advice) before he finally brought the rack to me. Four problems:

1) Unless you're in some tropical jungle, ants aren't much in the way of meat eaters. The flesh came off through almost a year of plain ol' decomposition.

2) The skull still smelled. Bad.

3) The antlers (exposed to the sun) lost much of their brown colour.

4) The buried skull had turned yellow and was a b!tch to whiten with peroxide. I never did get it as white as I could have if it had been a fresh skull.
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what about bleach/ javex?
 
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