As a child I was always fascinated by the macabre. My first encounter with taxidermy was in a bait & tackle shop with my dad. I don't recall exactly how old I was, but we'd walk into this shop and right in the entryway was a gorgeous stuffed mountain goat. He appeared to be strolling in, right along with the customers.You could dig your fingers into his thick fur, touch his knobby horns, or stare into his lifelike glass eyes. The store also had a full mount snarling brown bear, deer and moose heads and dozens of fish. But the trotting, friendly, white goat was my favorite.
My parents would take my younger brother and I to the
Harvard Museum of Natural History where I'd spend hours walking the collections of stuffed mammals, birds, insects, and ocean creatures. It was so impressive to see the exotic menagerie, but I wanted to know how They did it. "How does one stuff an entire tiger?" My 8 year old self vowed to find out...
20 years later & I'm in a good place. Stable income and a loving boyfriend who supports and even contributes to my strange hobbies. He is an avid hunter (I've gone on a few expeditions as well) and has a chest freezer with several deer hides he wants to learn to tan and make into clothing. Thus, over the last few years I've been doing a good deal of self-directed online research into preserving hides and taxidermy techniques.
There are many steps involved in processing even a small animal hide. After slowly and carefully removing the skin from the body it must be salted, scraped or fleshed out, pickled in an acid bath, fleshed again, briefly re-pickled, neutralized, dried, tanned with more chemicals, rinsed, dried and worked in a manner that breaks the skin's protein structure to produce a soft, cloth-like material. And that's JUST for a flat pelt. Molding and mounting the pelt over a pre-made animal form to create a "stuffed" taxidermy piece is another skill set entirely. So, suffice to say I learned pretty quickly that one does not simply Get Into taxidermy!
