Good evening to all! I am a young, beginning taxidermist with a problem. I took in a handful of whitetails from friends this year and my freezer has not been freezing as much as it should. It is an old freezer and anything on the bottom of it, has not fully froze. A couple of the capes are slipping quite badly...they don't smell so good either. I have been applying Stop Rot and trying to be gentle, but on one of them, the greatest area of slipping is on the white throat. It is in the fleshing stage. I feel terrible for this happening to these deer. I'm sure I am far more disappointed then the ownders will be. I still want to mount these deer, though. Are there any patching or cutting techniques that are worthwhile on large areas of slippage? I would probably be better off getting new capes than trying to (as a beginner) cover up such an issue with patching, football-shaped hole cutting, etc. I'm feeling pretty miserable about this...it's like I have failed already. I wasn't going to be asking for much money for these deer since I am still fairly new at this, so if I was to get new capes, I would just about break even. I could just as easily post this on the "wanted" section of the forums, but since I have already started, I will put it here. Is there anyone out there who has suggestions? I haven't seen a lot of whitetail capes on the forums that are cheap lately. Even if small repairs are needed, I would be grateful to acquire two capes. One was around 20" behind the ears and the other is slightly larger than that. I know, large capes are valuble and hard to come by, so even if I could come close to having these match the original neck sizes, they should look fine.
Thanks for everyone's help! It's much appreciated!
Daniel
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I usually do not freeze any kind of hide. First thing I do is skin it out, then turn the ears, lips, nose and eyes. Next thing is to be sure that I remove all the meat, then rough flesh the neck, and finish flesh the face. After doing this I give them a good wash, hang them up to let them drip for about 1 hour. Now I give them a good coat of salt and make sure that you place them where they will be able to drain, next day take them outside and shake the salt off of them and resalt them then hang them up. They will keep indefinately using this method. ( and if the freezer goes out, oh well no biggie)
My suggestion would be to find a replacement cape for the mount and then if you still want to try your hand at repairing use the one you have for a practice model. If you are doing work for customers, sometimes they do not understand why their trophy looks the way it does. And a nice mount will get you more work than a not so nice mount.If you start with the best skin you have your work will look a lot better. As you do more mounts then the repairing will become like second nature to you. Again I say don't practice on a customers mount,
practice on one that no one will see except for you....Hope this helps you
this one doesn't sound good. If you would want to call me in the morning, or anytime tomorrow as far as that goes, I'll do what I can to work with you on those capes. Again, this one doesn't sound good, but we can give it a try.
My toll free is 1-866-849-9198
Glen Conley
WHITETAIL DESIGNER SYSTEMS, INC.
I too salt instead of freezing. But Id skip the washing step for now, as theres no reason to clean them at that point in the process, as the salting process will have them cruddy again, and washing just invites slippage at that time. Getting them split, turned, and fleshed as quickly as you can and into the salt is the priority.
How about calling a repair man to check out your freezer first . Maybe you just need freon . Then do what the other guys said . Rick
Jeepers, a repairman is going to cost you $75/minimum just to come out. PLUS the cost to repair - if it's repairable. As you said it is older.
Replace the thing with a new one. Depending on the size you need, a 12 cu ft one will be under $300. And but an alarm for $10 for it. You will sleep much better, trust me...