Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Taxidermist ripoff

Rule number 1 ---- only pay with credit cards.

?s --- see rule #1

Qualify, Qualify, Qualify your taxidermist, if you never worked with him before!

I was ripped off in a different manner on one of my bears.

I killed an absolutely beautiful bear he scores 19 14/16" just over 500 lbs. He had a beautiful pure white crest and his hair was so black it looked blue and was thick and perfect. Because he was so nice I decided to do a shoulder mount with him.

So I contacted this taxidermist I never used, he said he did great shoulder mounts, that all of his clients were very happy and his rate was $1,000.00, this is back in 1991. So I agreed to let him do the work. 50% upfront, the remainder when I picked it up. This was the 1st shoulder mount I had ever done and was inexperienced and GOOGLE Ratings were not online yet.

So I go and pick up my bear, pretty excited of course. When I saw the bear, I thought to myself wow I don't remember him looking that small???? I did not think to inspect the mount in detail and headed back to my office with the mount, the whole time thinking "I don't remember him looking that small?????"

When I got to my office I started to inspect the bear and that is when I noticed all the overlapping and skin folds under his legs. That is when I figured out that he mounted my beautiful bear on a form of a bear that was 1/2 the size of my actual bear and I got reallllllllyyyyyyy, pisssssssssed offfffff! I was so mad in fact I wanted to punch the guy out.

So when I calmed down I called the taxidermist and asked him why he mounted my beautiful bear on such a small form????? He told me that he was going bankrupt and that was the only form he had left. So after a few choice words I hung up the phone.

Every time I looked at that mount I got upset and wanted to go to his home and punch his lights out!

So this is what I learned: Qualify, Qualify, Qualify your taxidermist!

Look at their GOOGLE Rating.
Make sure he/she has a brick and mortar building, with lots of work in the progress.
Inspect the work they have done and are in the process of doing.
Ask for client phone numbers and references, so you can call them and speak with them in person.

If you don't like what you hear or see, do not give them your animal otherwise you will live to regret it like I did. The picture below is that bear. It was so bad I didn't even hang it and hid it in my storage room.

KB

A lot of shady garage taxidermists out there.
I only deal with the best.
It's such a horrible feeling to take a trophy animal and entrust it to an inferior taxidermist and then act shocked when the crap comes back that you saved a few bucks on comes back to roost.

The best are like Van Gough or DaVinci.
Nothing says you get what you pay for like taxidermy.

I'd rather pay twice as much for something that I like than half as much for something I dont.

I know this guy

could be a really bad taxiderminist or if there's 10 and they're close to the same time frame it could be the tannery [bleep] up somewhere.. but you would think he would be doing his best to do what it took to work with the tannery to correct things if he's a good guy

So he screwed your over $300, 5 years ago.
Now you went back tondouble up?
I’m sorry for your luck friend.
But this one is all on you..::something about sharp tool in shed comes to mind.

Just dayom.

Someone wanted a taxidermed coyote lmao

That wasn't his review, it was another guy's.

Agreed. There are taxidermists, and there are taxidermy artists.

Thanks for pointing that out to Dre.......seems he's the one who needs a resharpening!

A guy could want worse.

This is what a great Shoulder Mount looks like, I qualified the heck out of him before he got my deer!

KB

My bad. I should have re read that and I did miss the part, that it was the one and only review.
Apologies.

Still you should have done your home work on a trophy like that.
Passing the sharpening stone back to you.

If his one review said that, why on earth would you give him any business?

Wasn't my bear and I didn't lose any money....go back and read the original post and keep your sharpening stone, you need it.

Wasn't my bear and I didn't give him any business. I just found the one review (yesterday) that was left by some other guy.

Some folks comprehension skills are lacking.

Pretty clear was your SIL bear and also clear the post was a review of the taxidermist in question.

Kind of the same thoughts of mine with a whitetail deer.

A 180" deer has 180" of horn, has nothing else other than that over a smooth headed yearling doe yet guys spend $600+ to have one mounted.