Sorry to have to ask this, but I didn't pay attention to how the bird arranged his feathers. Doing a (first turkey) tail mount.
First, the longest feathers, starting with the first feather on the right side of the mounting board. The second feather seems to want to overlap the first feather etc. until the center. Seems to be the same when starting from the first left feather on the left side of the mounting board. So what happens in the middle?
OR , do the feathers all overlap in the same way from right to left or, from left to right? i.e. what happens in the middle doesn't matter.
Next, the second tallest feathers. Do they go between the tallest feathers? How do they overlap?
Last, the short pretty feathers that have the irridescent band. Same questions.
Thought of shooting another bird to get these answers but didn't want to have to tell my kid why I lost my gun and was calling from jail.
Thanks a lot for your help!
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The two long center tail feathers go on top (overlapping each other either way), with all of the ones to either side being shingled so that the outer two on the edges are on the bottom. The next row up is just the opposite. The two in the center are underneath and the shingling starts from the outer edge.
The back feathers are less critical side-to-side as long as the rows closest to the head are on top of the ones closest to the tail.
Nancy M.
Thank you for your quick answer. The feathers are, at this very moment, properly pinned out on a piece of styrafoam insulation.
Jim M
you don't have to remove the feathers from the tail to preserve it. Simply clean the meat off the tail put some borax on it and spread it out on some cardboard and pin it. Drying time approximately two weeks.