This was my first mount ever and i happened to pick a coyote i was wondering if somebody could tell me why hair slippage occured behind the ears? I will run through the steps i took quickly. i took coyote out of freezer and skined turned out pretty good to my disbelief, then i fleshed it and split lips after words i washed it in soap water and lysol and dried with towel. afterwords i sprinkled it with borax and was planning on leaving out for night to dry decided wasnt best idea washed again. dried and put in freezer and waited for materials to mount. while on the forum here i read that you should degrease so when materials arrived i thawed and washed it again in degreaser and noticed the hair behind ears just pulled away. at that point i just let the skin sit out for a couple of days and decided to go ahead and mount. believe it or not it turned out good it was an open mouth head mount. also i just used the hide paste and mounted should i have done any other steps? or did i do to much unnecessary steps?
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You took coyote out of freezer (how long did it take to thaw? I skin as soon as the skin is thawed enough to start, this dont mean the whole skin is thawed, the carcass is still frozen.)
i washed it in soap(What is the pH of the soap?) water and lysol(LYSOL HAS A VERY HIGH pH its changed this alone may have added to the problem) and dried with towel.
afterwords i sprinkled it with borax and was planning on leaving out for (left it our for the night? This allowed bacteria to grow!) night to dry decided wasnt best (2nd washing again the pH could have been the factor) idea washed again.
dried and put in freezer( Rolled up tightly it could take additional days to freeze allowing bacteria to grow) and waited for materials to mount.
while on the forum here i read that you should degrease so when materials arrived i thawed (How long to thaw) and washed it again in degreaser.
TO MANY THAW AND FREEZING CYCLES!
With DP or borax, (check the pH of borax!) you have to thaw skin and mount, sounds to me like you abused the hide, you are lucky to only have the hair slip behide the ears.
rdenney;
First of all you didn't mention if you turned the ears. They have to be turned to allow the tannis to do there job. You shouldn't have sprinkled the skin with Borax. Instead you have salted down the hide for 24hrs., Shook off the salt then resalted the skin again. The salting process kills any bacteria, and also sets the hair. What kind of tanning did you do. It sounds like you just skinned out the coyote, sprinkled it with Borax and mounted it. You missed a lot of the processes, needed to do before mounting your coyote. If you need anymore help, E-mail me and I'll run you through the process of preparing a hide before you mount it. Good luck
Coyote
i forgot to mention i did put the dry preserve on the skin before mounting also the skin was not wrapped tight before being froze and when i did skin the coyote i only let it thaw long enough to get skinned, and the tapes i watched showed them skinning, washing in half cap lysol, half teaspoon dish soap to a gallon of water, drying with towel putting dry preserve on skin and mounting, at no time did they mention of the problems you could have by not watching the ph, should this be a big concern in the future?
Use the search button and you will see.
Phenol has been removed from Lysol, as I told you earlier check the pH of lysol and you will see.
All the thaw/freeze cycles did not help you.
Towel drying is usually insufficient to remove all the moisture from the hair after washing. A solution is to towel dry the hair and skin and then place the hide into a garbage bag filled with hardwood sawdust(you can get it for free at most any cabinet shop). Roll the hide in the sawdust for several minutes, making sure that all the areas receive a coating of the sawdust. Remove the hide from the sawdust and shake out the sawdust. Then, use a compressed air hose or blow dryer with NO heat to blow out the rest of the sawdust. It may be necessry to tumble the hide several times to remove all the moisture, especially on thick-haired animals. After you do all this, the hair should look very good and should be very soft and fluffy.
'They' said it all...jest like I tot 'em to teech yung peepoles when they axe questions.
Lysol is useless in solutions now since the Phenol was removed from the product.
Use 'DAWN" detergent for your washing an degreasing.
It is used for degreasing and saving lives of ducks and animals in oil spills...and for washing the rocks on the beaches of the oil spills in cleanups
Now I reffur ya back to my Master student Teachers above..I needa catnap.