Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska DIY Sheep Skull

Didn't realize you had a previous life. I don't know how you can make decent money and it'd be near impossible to please everyone 100% with their trophy.

Jeff
Local guy here maintains a colony. He's done a couple skulls for me.

Its why I"m an inspector now..... had to pay bills.

Good to know RE dermestids! I'll have to remember that for the future.

I know several folks with colonies...

Anch would be more convenienter for Jeff than Soldotna.

Super cool

No bettle colony is going to match a shrimp pot...

hard to compare anyway. LOL. I'll have to remember that.

But beetles, dermestids, are the museum required standard, not shrimp pots....

On top of doing an equal, boil free job you do not have to mess with any predrying to keep from killing or smelling your colony...

MM (L),

Heck of a nice job! And a gorgeous sheep. Typical Wrangell flair (or is it flare?).

Thanks for sharing the pictures and process with us.

Whats the time line on this working? Pot in the water "baited" 24 hours? Just curious.

Like I said never even heard of it.

We hear of putting in ant nests down here. Thats the biggest joke ever....

A day-long soak with a couple pulls to remove the shrimp will leave the brains gone, everything nibbled down to bone and the turbinate processes absolutely clean and in prefect shape.

Degreasing is usually not needed, but always a good idea... I also rinse in freshwater for quite a while.

The sand fleas are the primary nibblers, BTW.

Cool, I'll have to google sand fleas...

Fresh water soak? a week? Dawn in it or just soaking?

Degrease via coleman fuel or other method?

Always fun to see what others are doing.

I will hit it with soapy water a couple times, but not too serious because there is not usually much fat. Bears get the white gas.

I think it turned out great. Good job.

That bullet is pretty wild. I put a marmot skull in a crab pot, worked real well, just need to make sure the teeth can't get get loose.

When I did my cougar skull I used a method that they used at the Smithsonian at one time (learned it from a guy who had worked there). You put it in a bucket of warm water with horse turd. The water needs to be at about 98F. I used a fish tank heater. Each day you are supposed to drain off half the water and replace it with fresh. In 3 days I had a clean skull. There were still a few stringers here and there, but the brain, eyes, gums, everything else was gone. Does stink though! The bacteria in the turd eats it all. Down side is that it is hard to heat the water in the winter, and you don't want it inside.

I used to be a supplier for UAF back in the day for skeleton cleanup.