I have two medium sized bucks to mount. Both the deer were harvested in New England, one in Maine and one in New Hampshire. I am trying to mount both of them on upright Gene Smith forms. The problem is that the neck is too short on the forms. The head area fits fine and the begining of the neck fits just fine, but the hide wont fit over the soulders and the brisket doesn't line up right. The neck on my capes are both about six inches longer then the necks on the forms. I have no problem with altering the forms but I am just concernec that making the forms six inches longer will make the forms look awkard an unnatural. Do I just cut the forms in one place and add a bunch of two part foam or do I make two or three cuts and add foam there? Has anyone had to lengthen the neck on forms this much before?
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Not sure if I'd add 6 inches though
Try 3 or 4 and refit the capes.
I have had the same problem with these forms and also some of the older McKenzie sneaks add a few inches and it normally works out.
If the deer are early season kills make sure your not trying to put them on a swelled neck. Hope this helps...Ernie
Your remarks are common for beginners who immediately assume that the form must be the problem. Can you imagine what a deer form with 6 inches added to it would look like? A giraffe wouldn't be out of the question.
What's happened is that you've allowed the hide to shrink in the neck by pulling it lengthwise. With the hide wet, insert a lawnmower innertube into the neck and then blow it up until it bulges out both ends of the cape (I'm assuming the deer is tubed). Let it set that way in a garbage bag for an hour or so. Now go back and mount it.
I tell people its just like me an a T-shirt. With the pot gut I have, I I put on a large, my belly is exposed. If I put on a 2XL, my belly is covered. By increasing the diameter of the neck, you shorten your cape length. If you expand that cape properly, the brisket will move back into its proper place. The hide WILL FIT.
And the very LAST thing you should ever do is lengthen a form period.
Grin. Copy and paste address.
http://www.hidetanning.net/deerproportions.html
Brian, Go back and read George's post again-he's right on. If the cape is difficult to stretch you can ease things up a bit by thinning the skin some especially down the back area. Getting the shoulders to fit should not be too hard. Once the briskit fits you will start to see that there is ample skin and form it's just a matter of adjusting the skin by stretching. Enjoy, Aaron H.
I got the pictures of two bucks sparring (SURPRISE! that's what HTML's do isn't it? LOL) I'll bet if I goosed you in the ass, your neck would lengthen TEMPORARILY also. You gotta stop digging for anomalies. If those two bucks weigh the same and have the same RELAXED (i.e. DEAD measurements), they both fit the same form. Can you imagine how goofy the buck on the left looks if you take away the one on the right? Also,the one ont he right is quartering away according to his leg positions, so your depth of field is playing games with that as well. I didn't say I couldn't get IN the large T-shirt. I said if I did, my belly would show. If I take the 2XL and grab the sides and pull them out, the length shortens and my belly still shows. By the way, I've seen animals that size take whole cantalopes into their mouths and eat them. That excess skin doesn't show on that picture either.
Dead measurements, bet yer buns! You need to start mesuring your sternocephlacus, Buddy!
I'll dig out a couple of more pictures of goofy deer (in my opinion your little stubby necked deer look goofy).
Now, you also have a project for tomorrow. Call Ben Mears and ask him about neck lengths on deer. Yah aah aah! (That was a diabolically clever laugh if you didn't figure it out)
Six inches would be a tad too much, I would however accept two.
I guess the best solution would be to add a couple of inches and try to stretch the hides as much as possible. Anybody have any ideas about the best way to stretch the capes. Both the capes are not tubed, and they have been wet tanned by the wildlife gallery.
p.s. these were not early season deer. They were harvested in New England during the November rifle season and have long hair and not huge but semi-swelled necks.
And I still ain't recovered from them goofy looking noses of yours. LOL. (that was just a regular old maniacal laugh). Now bend over and spread those cheeks. I'm gonna check out how much your neck stretches.
Please, please, not the lawnmower innertube again!
Dorsal cut deer that are wet tanned have been stretched lengthwise during shaving. You have NOT spread those necks out to their full circumferences. Maine deer in particular are BIG Northern tier deer and you're never going to convince me that you have TWO pencil necked deer from those areas that BOTH have the same problems.
You can stretch them by standing on one edge and doing curls with the other side, or better, sew the capes back up as if they were a tubed deer with a "Y" cut and stretch them with Glen's favorite innertube as I described above.
IF you elect to add that two inches, I'm waiting till you run into your first fox or bobcat and find that they, too, are 2 inches too skinny but 6 inches too long. I've seen Glen's forms and Ben Mears forms. They don't look like gerenuks regardless of what Glen implies. If your deer is eating apples off a tree, that's one think, but an upright alert deer isn't extending himself that much. BTW, is it for yourself or for a customer? If it's a customer, you'll find that they want their 90 button bucks to be swelled up as if it had mumps and they're NOT going to be happy with a pencil neck.
I iknow Ill pi$$ a few guys off here, but this is worth mentioning. I only skimmed quickly over the answers you were given, Brian. Those guys will all give you good sound advice, but the minute I saw your original question, I knew what you meant.
Gene Smith's forms are very nice. But, some of his models...are you all ready? Some if not many have fairly short necks for our northern deer. Ive mounted on enough to know this. In fact, when I check in a head that looks swelled, but small framed or short in the neck, I call the deer a Gene Smith deer, and make notations as such on my worksheet for that deer.
So, you may not be so far off after all!
is that (just like George said) when you have a cut down the back that is not sewn up ALL THE WAY it will lengthen your cape, when you sew up a cape that has been cut down the back and you mount it on a form that has too big a neck it appears the brisket will ride up to the middle of the neck. I know I had this issue when I first started 4 years ago. I do believe that deer definitly vary in proportions now and then but..... that extra can be taxied into place. This also is the reason when measuring for a life size mount like a bear you are not sopposed to tug it lenght wise because it makes it to skinny around the mid section.
especially if it keeps me from getting inner tubed.
I've just added more photos and a few lines of text on the deer proportions page. Relaxation of the anterior trapezius is what allows for neck "extension". If you flex your biceps, then flex your triceps so that the position of your arm changes, it doesn't change the length of your arm. Up and down motion at the atlas can give but minimal extra reach. If each of seven vertabrae had one quarter inch difference in deer A and deer B that give you 1 7/8".
But back to Brian's original comments and questions, something he probably doesn't want to hear. You would probably be time, and money ahead to buy longer necked forms. The forms you already have will keep. It sounds simple, but adding to neck length for forma alterations is really a major alteration, IF you want it to look right.
Here's the address again, you'll need to copy and paste, this page isn't available from the homepage.
http://www.hidetanning.net/DeerProportions.html
Now I'll buy that after hearing what Bill said. I don't use Gene's forms, but for no other reason than I just buy them in bulk from McKenzie. But your really SHOULD be careful comparing arm bones with vertebrae. There IS this small matter of DISKS that DOES make one able to stretch (albeit ever so slightly) ones height if need be. And after I had one REMOVED from my back, I ended up almost a half inch shorter.
I'm glad you stated that this "alteration" Brian seems so bent on is, in effect, some major undertaking to "make it look right". Few beginners, IMHO, can pull it off without making the animal look goofy.
I don't think this has anything to do with Brian's problem,but you guys have missed an issue that drastically affects neck length.A deer can stretch his neck to full length of the vertebrae as in a sneak or a high-alert position or in a relaxed upright or semi-sneak position the vertebrae will"S" like a bird neck.The difference from one extreme to the other can be several inches.The vertebrae change very little in length,but the neck can change drastically in length.Look at a photo of a deer getting ready to bolt,with his neck in the high, alert position.The jaw can be close to 6" above the shoulder.The same deer can hold his neck in a relaxed,almost upright position and the jawline will be even with the top of the shoulder.The neck circumferences change drastically when going from one extreme to the other too.I haven't used Genes forms but they look good.My guess is they reflect that more relaxed upright pose.I like the look but it may be that some tanned skins may not stretch back to that position.Some tanned skins just won't do everything that a live one will.
I've been saying the same thing (only differently) and Conley and Yox keep throwing those contortionist deer pictures at us. LOL
Make 'em pay with that inner tube!
Let's take Jim's above analogies, which to a degree are correct, with thd exception of neck length......
The S shape of the cervical column as described in an up right position is true. The neck is primarily supported by the supraspinous ligament. It runs from the back of the skull the length of the vertebral column, with initial attachments at the initial thoracic vertebrae, or withers in livestock terms. This is also the "check mechanism" that stops forward mnd downward movement of the head.
The head goes downward when the anterior trapezius is in a relaxed position. That is what will allow these vertebrae to take on a straighter alignment. And an actual measurement taken from the back of the head to the withers will be longer in a sneak position than it would have been in the upright. In livestock terms, we are talking about what is called the top line, that's the silhouette presented as a full right angle profile. That is also refered to as the upper neck tie in.
The bottom line, or the lower neck tie in, is the over looked quotient here. That is what is going to show you an actual neck length. What you will be seeing is the profile of the sternocephlacus muscle that runs from the sternum, brisket, to up under the lower mandibles. The neck is going to be working like a hinge half, so to speak, coming off the shoulders and forward. Sternum isn't going to change position, vertebrae aren't going to telescope, movement of disc will be a shifting of shape of the disc with movement of the fluid within the disc depending on age of animal. Think of the disc as being shaped like a Lifesaver candy with a liquid core, as an animal ages, cartilage fills the areas surrounding the core, that cuts down on potential movement of the disc and suppleness.
Take a look at those reference photos. What does the hair patterns at the upper arm, arm pit and brisket tell you?
At least take out the valve core.
Somebody already poked a hole in YOUR inner tube. You keep throwing all that pseudophysiological mumbo jumbo in there and it's nice but doesn't play in Peoria. What do doctors do to people with compress fractures and pinched nerves in the neck? Does "traction" ring a bell there. The neck, in fact DOES constrict and expand to a small degree. For my missing disc, why would doctors want to inject steroids into the connective muscle tissue above and below the fissure? Get over it. This is the BEGINNERS CATEGORY. If a guy sticks with ONE SUPPLIER his whole life, he's going to get into trouble anyway. Way back when, I cut every damned 2x4 exactly the same lenghth for alerts and another for semi-sneak. We bolted the skull to it, wired the jaws shut and made a mannikin that always fit the skin. This guy has SKIN PROBLEMS not mannikin problems and this crap is only going to lead him into thinking HE DOESN'T. If you look at the picture YOU referenced, look at the buck on the right. What are those folds in his skin? I mean, if his neck is always so long, why would the skin folds appear when they don't when he's alert? This is one you AIN'T gonna win with me. But do tell us, what do YOU use to stretch the skin with equal pressure applied to the complete circumference of the skin before you slide the tube down over the head? Wanna buy some innertube stock?
My words stand above as written. I'm sure any of my pseudophysiological mumbo jumbo words can be found with a search engine, maybe even with pictures.
Feisty today, are't we? When those of us are illiterate to the principled adjectives of the language, it's all French to us. That's why birds have shoulders, elbows and wrists. We don't know what the real name is so when it's used, it's mumbo jumbo to us. Even football players call an anterior cruciate ligament an ACL cause they can't pronounce it and if it hadn't been for Achilles, I don't know what we'd have called that tendon holding our calves to our heels. Lighten up.
This is just a blah blah exchange in a meaningless taxichat post! Heck, I know the Smith forms well, in fact I just mounted on the upright last week, and these goofball friends of mine laughed at me too! Of course, thats all it was. Dont sweat it, we all have fun with this, and get a laugh or two as well.
Happens every year at this time. First full moon after the autumnal equinox. Weird things start happening. My eyeballs keep crossing involuntarily, and my nose twitches and wrinkles, and my damn upper lip keeps curling up. I also keep getting the darndest urge to urinate on my tarsal glands, what's bad is.......I don't even have tarsal glands. I'm victim of my environment.
O.K., I've lightened up long enough, back to serious mode.
The reason I talk funny isn't because I'm from Indiana. It's because I was raised in a "live animal" environment and have continued the life style for a total of over five decades. Along with the lifestyle can well go the language of Rome.
You see, I don't see taxidermy as simply moving skin, nor do I see beauty as being only skin deep. I see the overall beauty of the whole, but I see that as the parts and pieces that make up the whole. The shapes, lengths, and arrangements of these parts and pieces are what differentiate one species from another, or one breed from another.
When I see forms that are depicting a lateral movement when they should be depicting a diagonal, it hurts my eyes. When I see forms that have the muscles in flexion that should be in relaxation, it hurts my eyes. That doesn't mean the sculptor was lacking in talent, only that the knowledge of anatomy in regards to form and function is/was deficient.
I see a lack of knowledge of anatomy as an Achille's Heel of the industry. I'm not talking about the industry as a whole, but those of entry level. An education in anatomy surrounds us. It is there for the taking.
For those of you with children reading this, an education in anatomy can be taught at the dinner table in very short order. We can use George's bird talk from above. Simply ask the children, "Who wants the piece that contains the scapula, humerus, ulna and radius? O.K., now who wants the cloaca?". Guaranteed, those kids will leave the table with an anatomy lesson burned into their suseptible young minds.
God, how true that is. And you're right, there is that lack and I suppose many of us perpetuate it by dumbing down our discussions with the beginners. Guilty as charged. I'm still laughing about the cloaca remark.
On a serious note, I thought I was the only one who suffered from the prerut activity. I SWEAR I become more restless. My bladder always seems full, but my wife has already warned me that I she EVER catches me making a scrape under the damned floor lamp, I'm gone.