The first time I mounted a deer, (this past hunting season) I didn't have a set of ear openers, and I didn't know much about taxidermy, so I used a scalpel to "try" to open up the ears and remove the cartilage. This all ended up in a big mess with blown out, completely ripped, deer ears that led to really bad drumming on the finished mount.
Tonight I was working on fleshing and turning one of my practice capes, and I decided to get out my pair of ear openers that amy ritchie sent to me a few months ago. Then I took a syringe and a bowl of water and injected the ears all over on the back side. Within minutes I got the hang of the ear openers! I ended up turning the ears inside out without breaking the ear skin, which suprised me. I'm glad I finally learned, I was really sick and tired of damaging my deer ears.
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Keep going. I did the same thing. Injected a pair of ears and turned them to the tips flawlessly. Next 6 pairs of ears, blew them all out way worse then with the razor.
On a pelt with no lower jaw, I did get another perfect turn - "figures". Just needed the practice I guess...
You've finished your beginner's luck pair of ears now. Keep going.
I have learned to only open the ears about 90%, and not push my luck trying to get to the tip or edge with the openers, get as close as I dare, pickle, then open to the edge by hand, it will be simple after it has been pickled or even after the tan. The skin is thin enough that the pickle and tan will penetrate and soften it up to finish by hand. Much less damage and sewing.
That's what I figured, I didn't go to the complete edge of the ear tips. When I tried that with a fox before (using my hands and a knife to open the ears) I blew out the tips by going all the way.
and depressing the handle or are you holding the ear with your free hand so you can control the opening pressure? You can't just slip them in and squeeze.
Do you inject plain water?
yeah
if you grab the handles on the end
youve got to much leverage and its hard to control the force applied
on whitetails at least grab the handles a little closer
or cut them shorter
and i also use the othe hand for more control
I use my ear splitters to turn the ears about 80%. Then I get out an old arrow with a nice smooth field tip in it, set the nock end on the floor, slide it up into the inverted ear. I position the arrow head at the "seam" of the ear and pull down gently on the ear running the arrow up to the tip of the ear. It does a nice job getting all the way to the edges. Just dont pull too hard.