Okay,
I had this goldeneye that i mounted, and he had a shattered ankle....right above the webbing, and a pretty shot up wing. However, I chose to mount the bird in the classic boring I feel like stretching my wing and leg pose... only after I had everything wired up I realized that the wing I wired and the broken foot were opposite sides,... I couldn't repair the break as it was beyond repair. So i have a stretching bird standing on it's good foot on the same side of the body that the wing is strecthing...which kinda makes it look a bit quirky..... The center of gravity was had to place to make the mount look natural.
Question is..Do birds always strectch the same foot with same sided wing? and in my case there is no foot strecthing ,, just wing strecthing, but he's sitting on the good foot..and the shattered foot is tucked up... Maybe I'm just used to seeing it happen a certain way, but it sure looks goofy to me.. Maybe I should just chalk this one up to experience..
Jon
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...is uncertainty. I'm sure birds DO do goofy things as you described and I KNOW their feathers aren't always perfectly coifed, BUT, would you want to look at a mounted specimen in that condition? Asthetics is very important. If it looks goofy to you, it IS goofy. I've seen a lot of shot up ducks feet in my time, but all else being acceptable, I've never seen a foot I couldn't wire, card, let dry, and then repair with Apoxie. I guess I could build one complete if I wanted to, but maybe you could consider a replacement leg off another bird or even artificial feet.