As with any taxidermy project the first step is to acquire and study reference material before beginning the actual mounting. I have taken thousands of pics of snakes. But what does a picture tell us? One key thing to remember is that there are NO ABSOLUTES in the animal kingdom. So what I say here in this tutorial is my opinion on what snakes do MOST OF THE TIME, there is always an exception-to-the-rule. A few years ago I wrote a similar article in Breakthrough on rattlesnake anatomy for taxidermy purposes.
Breakthrough #85, Rattlesnakes, A Closer Look
I am also putting this tutorial on my website in it's entirety (37 pics for part I). Just click on REPTILE REFERENCE PAGE, scroll down to the link to RATTLESNAKE MOUNTING.
To save on space I will first discuss some key areas and then show pics to illustrate this.
90% of mounting a rattlesnake is easy because 90% of the snake is body and tail, it's the head that we don't do justice on. But let's start from the tail and work forward. The tail is not round, the bottom of the tail has sub caudal scales (scutes) and they are more flat than round. When a rattlesnake is crawling the tail is usually slightly elevated, but when coiled the tail is rarely so high that the anal plate is exposed. A common mistake is to mount the tail way too high.
The body is pretty simple, but too many people try to make the snake larger by mounting it on a larger form, thus creating stretch in areas where it shouldn't. On rattlesnakes there shouldn't be any wrinkles, BUT there is overlap on the inside curves.
Another common mistake when mounting a rattlesnake is to have any exposed belly be flat. In fact most of the time, the belly has a roundness to it and is not flat unless pressing flat on the ground.
As we get closer to the head we come to the neck area. I've heard it all LOL Bottom line is that rattlesnakes DO NOT have thick necks, BUT they sure do have a lot of skin there once it is ready to mount. Rattlesnakes tuck this extra skin right behind their head. When mounting a rattlesnake you can get rid of this extra skin and have a proper neck size by making grooves behind the head and tuck the extra skin there.
The head is not flat on the bottom nor is it flat under the chin area. Most of the time you will have to carve in theses details to get a realistic looking head.
The eyes are usually the same color as the ocular stripe that goes through the eye area. This is not absolute but a general rule. Also rattlesnakes have VERTICAL/SLIT pupils, ELIPTICAL pupils, and ROUND pupils depending upon the light source. At night when it is dark their pupils are ROUND to accept more light, during the bright daytime they are vertical/slit pupils to lessen the amount of light. Here are three examples:
Pits point forward, the nose out to the side.
The pupil can touch the supraocular scale (eyebrow scale) but rarely touches the bottom. When a rattlesnake lifts it's head the pupils generally stay perpendicular to the ground. On a rattlesnake mount the eyes are not sunken in.
The lip line is distinct on rattlesnakes. You should carve a small lip line on the mannikin head, it will give you an accurate guide to glue the skin to, first glue the bottom and then the top over the bottom slightly.
These are the basics and part II will follow shortly (mounting).
Kerby...
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