DIY Taxidermy Begins With Careful and Accurate Skinning

Whether you’re doing your own taxidermy, or paying a professional, skinning of the animal is the first priority. This requires special attention to detail. An poor skin job could mess up the finished work and in certain cases can make a mount nearly impossible to do.

Before stating to dress out your animal, consider the finished piece. Pelts can be tanned and displayed alone, or used in either a head or full-body mount. How you procede with the skinning of any animal will totally depend on what you’re going to do with it.

Pelts that will be displayed alone require fewer cutting skills. This type of skinning is a good place to begin. Smaller animals such as squirrel and rabbit will make good practice. Larger projects should be reserved for later, when you’re more skilled.

Once skinned and prepped, animal pelts can be used for a variety of things. Pelts of beautiful animals are sometimes used for public and private displays. They can also be used to make animal fur rugs, and of course robes and fur coats as well.

Full-body and head mounts require very careful cutting and attention to detail. Every single cut can mean the difference between a skin that fits the mount and one that doesn’t. Leaving enough of the skin to work with, preserving the integrity of the face, dealing with claws and ears are just a few of the concerns.

Before you make the first cut, you should get some vital statistics on the animal. Inaccurate measurements of the body will need to be taken and noted. This is most important when the skin is going back on the animal in a mount. Really good measurements now will make the task later a lot easier.

Now that you have your measurements, it’s time to get the tools and resources you need together. One is your standard hunting knife, it’s typically large and sharp, perfect for first cuts. But for fine skinning work, a short bladed knife such as a utility knife or kitchen paring knife is an absolute neccesity.

If you intend to mount the head of a deer or elk only, you need to skin down to a certain point on the shoulders.

Then, you need to preserve the entire head until you get back to your shop. Prepping to do a life-size mount means you need to get that animal totally skinned and back to the shop in good time.

Maybe you just want to tan the hide itself as a trophy. Get the steps right, keep your end goal in mind and you’ll have beautiful trophy mounts and hides.

Hunters often make the same mistakes out in the field. They don’t know how to take care of their kill and drive around for days with their deer in the back of the truck showing it off. By the time it gets to the taxidermist, it just isn’t salvageable.

So don’t make those mistakes, once you bag the prize, pack it up properly and get back to your shop where you can start the process.

For more information and to get your Free DIY Taxidermy reports, visit: http://taxidermy.biblioflip.com

K.L. “Vin” Hayes leads a great team of independent writers and researchers. Over the last 10 years, they’ve worked together to produce high-quality digital reprints of vintage documents as well as original works. Vin specializes in how-to information that includes a wide variety of subjects such as hunting & fishing, hobbies & crafts, construction, self-improvement and more.