Please Help! I had a tragedy happen to me last night. I am new to taxidermy, have done my first duck, a mallard drake, last month. Well last night I was skinning out a greenhead, mine, everything was going pretty well. I got all the way down to the base of the skull with no tears or holes. I guess I was pulling a little to hard, so I could cut the neck right at the base of the skull, because all of a sudden ìpopî the skin tore off completely in a perfect circle just below the neck ring. I was horrified. Like I said I am new and was hoping someone could give me some advise on how, if possible, I could fix this to make a decent flying mount. Any advice is welcome. Semper Fi.
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Ok i am somwhat new to taxidermy as well i have probably mounted a litte over a dozen ducks but this has happpend to me as well. It didnt happen while skinning it out, i tried to use a neck piece that was too big (i will never do that again) so then the head popped off. All i did was very carefully stitch it back to the neck. DO NOT GLUE! If you glue you will be able to see a seam there where it was torn off. I know some people that glue there brest incision back together, if the birds breast if facing the wall that is not a problem but if you have ever seen an incision that has been glued you will notice it right away. So if you take your time you should be fine take very small stitches. And take your time dont rush.
My first duck was a wood duck, and I popped its head off too. You'll get the hang of this game. Once you get the feel of it you wont have that problem again, as a matter of fact having made the mistake once is a great learning experience. It really teaches you how delicate some of these birds can be. You can just sew it back on. The one thing about birds is that they have feathers and feathers do a great job of hiding a screw up. You can really do a lot with the pose too. If the bird is too bad to be sewn back up just chaulk it up to experience, but dont quit until you have given it your best effort.
I was no differant when I started bird taxidermy I coudnt understand why the back of every bird head has to be split...It is no big deal split back of head and this will insure you can invert it properly..later on a few stitches will suck everything back up again has if nothing ever happened
it is not always easy to repair. To be successful you have to sew the skin back where it was. A small variance in rotation will cause a noticable flaw when mounted. Before telling you how I would accomplish the task, you really need to decide if you want to save the duck - since it was your own, you have the option to throw it out and start on a new one - if you have one. Having said that, there is still a good reason to attempt to sew it - since you are just starting,learning what some would consider a major repair effort may have value to you.
Here is how I would do it, if I had to. Finish skinning the head. If you are going to use an artifical head, remove the skull entirely, if not, the skin will be inverted over the head. Lay the torn pieces together and look for spots that fit - such as a jagged edge, a small "v", or some other land mark that you can "tack" (place a stitch) hunt for and tack at least six spots - one stitch each. Make sure that the skin is not twisted but laying naturally. Keep in mind that the skin has a dorsal (top) side and a ventral (bottom) side. Then, with a small needle and a single thread start sewing between the "tack" stitches - do not pull tight or "cinch" the stitches. The challenge will be to approximate the skin edges together in their orignal place without bunching the skin and without sewing any of the small neck feathers in the suture line. A trick to keep the feathers out, is to wet them before you start to sew. Do this all around the neck. Because you have probably not defatted the neck, you have to make sure that you are really sewing skin and not just the tissue remaining on top of the skin. I take a small curved scissors and remove as much of this as I can before sewing. If you removed the skull, you can now carefully re-invert the skin with feathers out to see how you did. If you left the skull in, you will have to make a relief cut to allow for the skull or you will tear the skin again. Good luck
I think everyone has done this when they first started. I popped the head off a gadwall back in the day. I sewed it back on and you could not even tell. I sewed it from the inside as well. Just take your time.
'Been there, done that too.
The most recent episode (several years ago) was not even my fault! I was working at a large taxidermy studio where the birds were kept in a large freezer with all sorts of other things and, as usual, "Murphy's Law of Chest Freezers" was in full effect.
(The depth of any given item's location in a chest freezer is directly related to the intensity of your need or desire for it.)
As a result, the freezer's contents were shuffled almost daily.
When the time came to mount Mr. Mallard I took him out to thaw and ...
(What's wrong with this picture?) ... no head.
It took a complete emptying of the freezer to find it, buried in the loose frost on the very bottom in a corner, and almost freeze-dried.
After skinning and fleshing it separately and then sewing it back on, I was once again reminded of why I ALWAYS freeze birds with the head folded under the wing (or at least against the body.) That one had been frozen with its neck straight, and "sho 'nuff" ... it got snapped right off and worked its way out of the package.
(There was no sign of any damage on the completed mount.)
Nancy M.