Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters European mount

guess I'll have to try fire ants again, but likely as John mentioned I"m too picky...

I don't mind bone color at all, but I do hate any grease spots.

All I"m going on is how we were trained at school and what museums require when you do/did work for them.

RE sal soda, if you are not careful, I ordered some for some folks here that were ants in the pants had to get em done asap, and they drank a few beers..and left the skulls in too long, sal soda ate a lot of the bone up. Which it supposedly warned them against in the info...

RE chlorine bleach, it will also eat up the bone in a hurry if its to strong. Bone will become porous and weak... I know.. had to try just because I didn't believe the instructors.

RE rotting in water not being clean, its extremely clean, one reason that in the day, thats all the museums really would accept, before the advent of the use of dermestids. It takes warm water. When doing this for a living, all skulls stayed in the freezer until we were above 90... at those temps, yep it'll stink a tad, not enough to bother me, but the heads rotted perfectly clean and needed nothing, no pressure washing blowing stinky crud all over the place etc... and getting you wet and so on, nothing but a bit of peroxide if desired. No grease stains. No smell. Nothing. Generally in about 5-7 days.

Unfortunately these days folks are all about the McDonalds syndrome and have to have it right now. Cool with me. But patience seems to be lacking everywhere you turn.

Hell I might take the next few culls I shoot, and drag one to fire ant nest if the buggers are around in this wet/cold.. and take another and put dawn in it and boil the hell out of it and see what gives... I"m also not to old to learn, not that i'd do my own ones that go on the wall any different than the rotting method. DIdn't say I wasn't stubborn. LOL.
Bottom line if you are happy with how you do it, thats all that really matters.

Thanks everyone.I've had it in water for a couple days,but aint put any heat to it yet,but I probably need to .

OMG
Deer,
do not add heat. You need to let that baby work for a week or two more.
Critical to the story later, over too many beers, about the internet and asking for advise…
Like the flesh eating beetles I had in my basement for a year. Took months to get them going. Then try to keep them fed!!!!! Try to keep the flies out of a fish tank with a smoldering head in it…...
Not to mention the dead body smell in the same area of the house where laundry needed to be done.
That story comes out just about every time the duck blind is slow or the party is populated with a few non hunters among the hunting minded….
Needless to say the compost pile full of night crawlers worked just fine and only freaked out the gardner every time she went for some potting soil amendments…….
Way better than having to do all the laundry.

I ain't put any heat to it yet,but I did pull it out of the water,and took a hose to it.what flesh is still on it is white,but the inside of the snout was bloody.I ran water thru the snout till it ran clear,and changed the water,which was bloody..I don't care if it takes a month,as long as the results are the same..Thanks everyone

This: http://www.skullsunlimited.com

the rotting in water is how museums and similar institutions do it. beetles can damage the delicate bones but most hunters dont care about that, museum specimens its more of an issue. know alot of people that boil and are happy with the results.

I have done about a 1/2 dozen euro's and have had a taxidermist do a couple.

Boiled/simmered a few and picked at them, repeat, repeat, sucks.

The 2 mule deer I had a taxidermist do are strictly garage quality, I was not impressed. Too white, fake looking, whatever.

The last 2 I've done involved a pressure washer. Very messy but fast and clean(skull). Soak the head for a day or two and blast. Repeat once and you should be done.

I wear rain gear(bibs and coat) and safety glasses. Not something I'd do in town but it is by far the easiest method that I've tried.

Water temp needs to be high enough so the microbes will thrive but not so hot as to kill them. 80-90 degrees should do it.

John

Interesting. I just boiled three skulls today. One a nice mule deer I picked up this fall elk hunting, another little 8 pointer some trespasser shot on my property and left to die, and a really nice 10 point whitetail I got last Friday. No room for another shoulder mount, so the 10 pointer got the euro treatment along with the others.

I always boil first with a little Borax mixed in. I boiled about three hours and scraped off all meat and cleaned out the sinus & brain cavities really well.

I then finished with a 2 hour boil with Tide laundry detergent and a scoop of Oxy-Clean.

The Borax pretty much took care of all cartilage, etc and anything else that could get greasy. The Oxy-Clean and laundry detergent on my second boil cleans the skulls, whitens them and deodorizes them quite well.

I've done about 25 skulls this way and they end up as clean as my beetle skulls.

Two tools I use during the process are a large pair of forceps for pulling meat/cartilage/brains out of tiny places...they do a great job. Second I use wooden "push sticks" I fashioned in my shop years ago to scrape off the meat. They look like woodworking chisels, only made from wood.

The Oxy-Clean really whitens the skulls...that's the trick!

Do not use bleach

Peroxide is what should be used