Do neglected skulls take longer to finish?

[CA Trapper]

I have 8 Corsican ram skulls I got more than a couple months ago. They arrived some with mummified flesh and skin on them. They've been in heated dawn/ water and sometimes dawn/ammonia/water or dawn/peroxide/water for nearly 2 months @ 115-130 degrease 24/7. A couple are still orange with grease while others just gave greasy spots. Is it because these sat for who knows how long before I got them? They're mighty stubborn.

[PLTannery]

Yes.  Some of them Never come white.

[Westside]

I got a mule deer that way. Mumified skin and hair, rotted that off and now in dawn and heater water for a month and a half. There are some orange spots I hope come out but the water still gets cloudy. I guess only time will tell.

[Skull Designs]

I got a bighorn that was killed 30 years ago, mummified skin on it and all, its coming kinda clean. I had a elk that sat for a year in a shed that I just finished, took about 3 months longer than most

[CA Trapper]

Ok thanks. Guess I'll just have to keep at 'em. Patience is the key it looks like.

[The Dog]

Flip side of all of this, any heads I cant fit in a freezer or get to right away get prepped and dried out with meat still on untill I can get to them.  Now I am removing eyes and brain and most meat, and if they look real bad they get a soak to pull the blood out before drying.  But these seem to be the same as most heads in turns of cleaning.  I think it depends on the animal, how much was left on and how good you are!!  

[Toxic]

had a customer give me one that dried in the bed of his truck. the bone was black after maceration. it seemed to be a bacteria since it is coming off in the degreaser but it still looks bad, going to be tough to get this one pristine

[Sea Wolf]

I had a mummified ram head that I got. I soaked, soaked, soaked. Degreased, soaked, peeled, pulled, cursed and beat on it with a hammer. Wouldn't degrease, flesh stayed stuck and horns wouldn't come loose. After several fruitless months, I caved in and slowly and lowly simmered it with a turkey fryer outside with Dawn, water and (I think) a handful of Arm and Hammer Baking Soda. Changed the water out three times. Horns never came off but after peroxide paste the skull came out very nicely. If this had been raw, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been such a bear to do.

[steamvalley]

acetone works well for me on tough grease.

[Mxgurl89]

I'm having the same thoughts on a whitetail buck I'm working on. My uncle found the entire carcass in the woods a week after it had been killed, sawed the head off at the neck, got it tagged and stuck it in the freezer in nothing but an open black trashbag. It had been in the freezer for 3 years before he gave it to me to clean.
I thawed it, and the hide was rock hard stuck to the skull and freezer burned to heck. Got it all macerated (took 2 weeks), and it's in the degreaser now. I've noticed there's a slight orange area on the top of the skull that I'm hoping will come out. Time to get the peroxide out and see just how much grease this sucker has.

[lizardguts]

I had a bunch of small skulls that had the meat dried on them for a long while, the yellow stains never came all the way out. I think I had them for around 4-5 months in heated Dawn, followed by a few weeks in acetone, and then more Dawn, with peroxide soakings in between.