Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Europe Request for a favor

Would you boys over there please post some pictures of European, especially German/Austrian style antler mounts, please. I don't know about French/Belgian or Scandavian mounts as I have not seen them. They may be the same.

I have seen some old European mounts and I think they look very good. I love the stark white bone against the dark wood plaque.

Over here, at least in my part of the world, the taxidermists have the idea that a European mount is the whole skull less the lower jaw. This is stuck on a post and the post is mounted to a wood shield plaque. You can't tell them anything as they think they know it all. Personally I don't care for what they call European mounts here. They remind me of road kill someone has picked up.

The true European mounts I have seen are just the skull cap including the nasal bones mounted on a dark wood oval with some type of carving around the edges. I don't remember what the carving was. Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me but I don't think so.

So, if you would, could some of you put up some pictures that I could download and show to a taxidermist in case I get some horns I want to hang on the wall.

Thanks

BCR

BCR,

your memory is quite correct. For a decent European mount you take a guided saw and decap through the brain cavity, half of the eye, above the upper teeth and end up with a complete nasal passage.

Cleaning and bleaching gives you white bone.

The skull is then attached to the wood plate with a steel bracket. Not seen from the outside.

Here are some images.

http://www.trophaeenbretter.de/mitte.htm

I am sure, others will have pictures available. If not, I get back to you.

BCR,

There is no set way to cut a skull for a European mount...Usually its cut to remove the teeth in the upper jaw, but after that its really down to individual preferences and local traditions.

My early attempts were not very good, with the cuts varying a lot from trophy to trophy and the skulls not being as white as I would have liked. The bottom skull in the pic is an early attempt and I wish I'd done better as its a bronze meedal head!

I have now settled for what is termed the long nose cut as in the upper two mounts in the picture..



Below is a very average Muntjac that was mounted more for practice than anything else. Again its a long nose cut..





Regards,

Peter

Here's the official C.I.C. way to saw a deer skull.

Some trophy pics at random :





[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v244/Othello041990/Cerftt.jpg[/img]
[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v244/Othello041990/BrocardStrihou13.jpg[/img]
[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v244/Othello041990/CerfstrophesI.jpg[/img]
[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v244/Othello041990/CerfstrophesII.jpg[/img]
[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v244/Othello041990/Trophessalon.jpg[/img]

Andre; Verrryy cool. Love the Chamois with the writing on the skull....You have quite an impressive assortment of trophies, thanks for sharing.
I particularly like the fact that you (and other Europeans I've encountered)will take an animal with broken horn or other "defects" and remove him from the gene pool, but then treat him with the same respect due the other "trophies" and just as gladly put him on the wall.... We should be so inclined on this side of "the pond"...
Ingwe

Ingwe,
Bravo for your keen eye, you spotted my "unicorn", which has quite an history. He's Scottish and was infamous as a killer stag. Game wardens were after him for quite some time as they regularly found carcasses of (better) stags having been stabbed to death during the rutting fights. I was stalking that day when our pathes ran parallel on both sides of a ravine. He was 300 m away but my stalker told me to shoot him "on the house" (no fee). I went prone and took the shot, my .300 Win Mag drilling both shoulders and dropping him on the spot. That was the easy part because getting him out of there took both of us out for the rest of the day...

BTW, he was a genetic "one horner" and never wore a second antler, as shown by the absence of corona.

Fellow Campfire Members;
Thank you to Mr. Boggy Creek Ranger for starting this fascinating thread.

The mount photos from Mr. Andre and Mr. Pete E are definitely cool. Somehow I never realized a muntjac had �tusks� before. Do they use them in a similar manner that a hog does perhaps?

Due mainly to lack of space and funds, I had had European style mounts done with a Hartebeest taken decades ago in Kenya and then I did a Canadian version of it when I was fortunate enough to shoot a local California Bighorn.

Thanks to your photos and instructions, I now have the idea of what I want to do if I ever find a local elk or moose that meets our point restriction and will stand still long enough for me.

Thanks again for all who posted, very educational and very cool indeed!

Regards,
Dwayne

BC30cal,

Muntjac use those tusks for fighting and they are quite vicious with them too...On the bigger bucks its rare not to find a least one tusk damaged or snapped off all together.

And woe betide any dog that corners a wounded muntjac as they will use those tusks to open up a dog in an instant..Quite a few dogs have been killed in this way by being disembowled...

Regards,

Peter

Peter;
Thanks for the reply.

I've learned something yet again here at the Campfire!

Thanks again,
Dwayne

Dwayne,

As well as Muntjac we also have a limited number of Chinese water deer which again have tusks..

These are also one of the few species of deer where neither sex grows antlers..





These are pictures off the net as I have yet to get one of these, although they are on my wish list so to speak..

Regards,

Peter

Peter;
Thanks for these photos as well.

I've never even imagined that "Sabertoothed" deer existed.

They are most unique indeed, I can see why it would be on your "to do" list.

Good luck on shooting one and please put up a photo if you get one.

Regards,
Dwayne

Thanks for the story behind the trophy...I've got a few of those "off-beat" trophies myself, and there is usually a good story behind them... like the old, tired, worn Hartebeest bull I snuck up on within 50 yds. and shot with an iron sighted .303 British.....only to find out he was blind on the side I snuck up on!
Thanks again!
Ingwe

Andre, Oh, and yes, that old Hartebeest is "European" mounted!
Ingwe

I'd be using a 375 on the tusked deer!

Anymore I like 'European' mounts more than any other form.

As far as cleaning skulls for European mounts, avoid using any degreasing chemicals that are too harsh, or whitening the skull with ordinary bleach as the bone is liable to corrode and become pitted as in these that I did:





Edited to add the stag's skull has been cut in a way which is typical for the UK, particulary Scotland..

As I mentioned earlier, personally I now prefer the "long nose cut" as done in some of the Red trophy's of Andre's...To me that is a far more pleasing cut than either a full skull or just the "plate"...

Ok, maybe I am out of date or maybe it is local preferences. I hunted in Hessen in 1980, 1981 and 1982 and in lower Bavaria in 1991 and 1992. The small game like the roebuck and the chamois was short cut and placed on a plaque as shown. The larger deer like the red stag and the fallow stag was cleaned, bleached and hung whole, minus the lower jaw.

Since returning home I have done my whitetails much like the roe deer.

Pete, what strange big games you have in the UK.

So you have the red stag, the roe deer, the muntjac, the sitka deer.

Do you have fallow deers ? wild boars ( I heard the specie was about to come back your side of the channel) ? Rams ?

grand_veneur,

Available in the "wild" and available to stalk "fair chase" we have:

Red
Roe
Fallow
Sitka
Muntjac
Chinese Water deer
Wild boar (recently restablished, but very localised)

And depending if you view them as worthy of being classed as a trophey or not, we also have feral goat and feral soy sheep, but again the populations very localised...

Regards,

Peter

Thanks Pete.

I did hear boars were coming back (and some in Paul McCartney's Neighbourhood ... ).

Altjaeger

I've travelled quite a bit around Germany, Austria, Belgium and France and there's no real uniformity when it comes to trophy cuts...Local preferences and traditions along with "fashion" ie what people see in the hunting magazines or on the net all plays a part.

The only time it really matters if you are having a trophy scored by CIC. With Roe for example, the whole skull (less the bottom jaw) is weighed...If you have cut your skull, set compensationary points are awarded to make up for the lost weight. However, most people would say that these compensationary points are not very generous and its far better not to cut the skull if its to be scored..

If you look at that first pic I posted of the three Roe heads, the bottom was measured as a bronze medal just missing silver..

The reaon it was cut so short was done to my stupidity.

On getting the Roe back home, I took the head off and put it in a bucket of water to soak while I dealt with the carcass...

I had skinned the carcass, and was part way through butchering it when it dawned on me my Border Terrier was not hanging around as per usual when meat was in the offing.

A dire feeling of dread came over me as I went to look and found the over turned bucket...Further searching found him behind the shed happily chewing on the head!

Luckily he'd not had time to cause too much damage and one very short skull cut later things didn't look as bad as I first feared. I couldn't get too mad as I'd taught him to track using discarded deer heads



Regards,

Peter