Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Best way to clean Skull's?

wrap antlers in tin foil to keep rats from chewing them and bury up to the base of the antlers in the back yard for 6 months. Clean and peroxide if wanted afterwards. Don't dig it up too soon in that it really stinks.

I have a friend with beetles....

i did a coyote that way, found out that 4 months was too long. Depends on the soil. In the garden. 6 weeks is plenty.

Just watched an episode of the tv show "Bones" and they used Dermestid Beetles to clean off the bones of an explosion victim.

If it's good enough for Dr. Temperance Brennan then it's good enough for me!

Clean off all the fur. Remove the eyes. Place skull in a trashbag and knot the top. This will keep in any humidity so the tissue doesn't dry out. Place a recycle bin on top to keep animals away. Place cinderblocks or other weights on top of recycle bin. Wait about 6 months. Presto, clean skull. Make sure you place the skull away from your home. They stink pretty bad if you're downwind. It's amazing how the bugs eat right through the bag. When it's done, the bag will look like it has 10 million pinholes in it. Clean the skull with "skull whitener".

http://www.skullwhitener.com/

I've had the pleasure to do quite a few bear skulls and have found beetles to be the easiest way to do a skull simply because someone else did it for me, but since I like to do my own, here is what I've found works best for me. I pull the skull, scramble the brains, pop out the eyes then I put the whole head without removing any of the meat into a pot of boiling water w/ a scoop of Oxyclean for no more than a half hour. When you pull the skull from the water all the cartilage and other connective tissue pulls from the skull and stays with the meat. When I have cleaned a skull of most of the meat before hand and then boiled I found it time consuming to pick and clean the leftovers that did not come off. After I pull it from the pot I'll hit it with a pressure washer and blow out the excess which isn't much, then I'll toss the skull into a bucket of acetone for about 10 days, this removes all the oil in the skull. If I want it to be whiter I've used just over the counter peroxide and soaked it in that for about a week, it works, but I have never had the chance to use anything stronger. That's what has been the quickest turnaround for me, also the cheapest and no foul odors.

It also worked really well for a couple of dall rams after I popped the horns.

Follow Sam's process with degreasing in Coleman fuel. )Taxidermy forums can fill you in on Sally's Beauty Supply items for whitening / bleaching kits if Makenzie is too pricey.