Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game JJHack's magic, bear skull photos

I've just have to share this. The top skull is a bear skull that JJHack cleaned for me. The second skull is one I did myself. I wish I would of known Jim before I did it myself. His work is extremely clean, bright white, and impressive. Notice how gray and cracked the skull I did appears. That's because I boiled mine. Jim uses beetles to clean skulls and the results are outstanding! The bottome photo is just for comparison. <BR> <BR> <BR>

Beetles huh? That might be a solution for E4E and Tex. They could mail JJ their underwear and the beetles could get it clean for them. Anybody wear false teeth? No more brown stains, just buy some beetles from JJ and let them work on your teeth every night while you sleep. Seems like there are other uses out there for these little critters....<P>Wade

I have to second Big Sky's kudo's to JJ. I got my black bear skull back in December. Everyone I show it to is very impressed by its pristine condition. Good luck, Troy.

My brother in law does his own European mounts, and washes them in a clorox solution to whiten when he's done boiling them. ~~~Suluuq

Chlorine Bleach has a very bad effect on the bones causing them to become chalk like. It also continues to have this effect as long as the bone lasts. There is no practical way to neutralize it. The bleach will continue to break down the bone forever. <P>On ungulates(hoofed game) the problem is not that bad becuase the skulls are not scored. However on carnivore skulls it is critical to maintian the maximum size for scoring purposes. <P>If used and dilluted a lot it will work OK but there is a fine line between to much and not enough to really get them white. jj

Fellow skullkeepers, thanks for sending the photos. I must second JJ's statement that bleach will make skulls chalky. I hvae done the skulls of several medium-sized whitetails using a bleach solution after natural critters (and pliers, scrubbrushes, etc.) were used for the major defleshing. The skulls that are as white as I like are also "chalky". They're not totally brittle like chalk, but the surface of the horn can be rubbed off in flakes/dust with your fingernail. This is after a couple years. If I had a really nice skull, any species, I would not use this amateurish method.<P>Let's get more skulls, Talus

For those interested there is several time lapsed photo's of a grizzly bear skull from frozen to finished on my web site. You can see just how effective a beetle colony can be cleaning bones. It is at:<BR><A HREF="http://www.customosteo.com" TARGET=_blank>www.customosteo.com</A>

Just checked out the bugs at work--pretty impressive! I didn't realize that they did it so fast! Thanks for education JJ! Geez, the things you can learn at this site....<P>Wade

Now that is COOL !<P>--Steve

I'll third Big Sky and Troy's kudo's. JJ did my lion and bear from last year and both are wonderful trophies.

For any of you bear,cougar,boar hunters or anyone else that wants a skull cleaned you really owe it to yourself to let JJHack clean one of your trophy skulls. His work really has to be seen in person to be appreciated. I've worked in several taxidermy shops and have cleaned a number of skulls myself. I've seen literally hundreds if not thousands of cleaned skulls do to my interests/hobbys and my occupation as an artist. The work JJ does is in a class all it's own. I've never seen better or even a close second to the quality of the skulls he cleans. His level of quality brings it up to an art form. I hope that a few of you bear hunters this spring will give his skull cleaning business a try I know you won't be dissapointed. Oh and btw, I don't get a thing for posting this. In fact I've never met JJ in person (although I hope to someday) I'm just one extremely satisfied customer!

Big Sky,<P>I absolutely intend to send JJ some skulls to clean! Hopefully from this Spring, but there's always the Fall...<P>------------------<BR>Brian<BR><A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/bw_99835/" TARGET=_blank>The 416 Taylor WebPage!</A>