Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Skull maceration

Yep, I’d flush it. Should help with degreasing later. With heat that head is done in 2-3 days from that stage.

Copy I’ll take a temp with the clean water, don’t want my meat thermometer touching that water!! 🤣🤣

I’ll glove up and pull a bunch of that slimy shiit off too

We have fire ants were I live. I put the skull on a fire ant hill, and cover with a tin tub, bucket, etc. Ants do a great job.

Guy only goes without gloves one time lol. Going to use acetone on the cat skull. Experimenting. Heard it works on bears. Deer and elk so much easier than predators.

Soak the whole skull in acetone? How long?

Sitting here at work posting this, I can smell that shiit!! Good lord that shiit is bad!! 🤣🤣

The cat has been the worst I’ve ever smelled. After it’s clean, soaking in acetone till grease free. Dawn has worked fine but wanting the cat to be perfect. Either way of degreasing, end results are quite good. Lose any teeth on that bear yet?

Holy shiit!!! That bear is something else.....

Hmm... the mountain lion skull got me thinking. While it obviously wouldn't work for anything with antlers, I wonder about an 8qt pressure cooker? I have two 6 quart Insta-Pot cookers and the meat falls off the bone. I wonder what an hour or two would do to s skull.

Boiling is not an original thought.

It’s worth the stank... 🤣🤣

It turns out a great product. The challenge is getting water to 90 degrees for a period of 7 days or so. Do that and meat falls off completely with no damage.

Goal in off season is to figure out how to rig an electric hot water tank heater to maintain 90-100 degrees in a larger tank. See if I can pull that off.

Sheep is getting there...

Bear is out of the acetone soak and starting bleaching.

Looking real good.

Thanks for all your help, by the way.

I pulled all the teeth that I could out of the bear skull. Glad I did, because there was a lot of rotten flesh inside the canines. However, now the skull is dry (post acetone soak) and I'm having trouble getting them back in the skull... suggestions on that? Soak it in water overnight and see if that makes a difference?

I'd think a hot soak for a day and then see if that helps. I've got lion teeth cleaned and waiting for reinsertion after skull is done. Curious to see how that goes. Be curious if coating teeth in elmers glue and trying to insert might lube them up enough? I'll be trying that as it has worked well on deer, elk and antelope.

Did about a two week rot & two weeks with dawn - any idea what the white deposits are? And how to get rid of them?

That skull is going to look great. That is carcass wax. Take warm water, dawn soap, toothbrush, and scrub those areas well. That stuff will come right off. Rinse with hot water. After those are gone, you're ready to whiten with paste peroxide.