I have been fortunate enough to collect a pair of greater prairie chickens on a hunt to Kansas. I have quite a lot of experience with
waterfowl but, this chicken is a totally new bird. I have already
purchased artificial air sacs. What can I do with the eye combs?
Are there any artificial ones? Also are there any books devoted to
this subject for reference or photo albums sold by taxidermy suppliers? Thanks for any help.
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Use google and you will have tons of reference photos! I did the search two weeks ago and man did I find so great pics.
For good looking wattles, if they are big enough, carefully split the wattles, and put a little bit of apoxie-sculpt in them. Then, when you are done mounting, put some paint on them and they will look good.
What you have with Prairie chickens are airsacs on the males, you will carve the air sacs. Or order the Newmeyer airsacs from WASCO.
Pay close attention to the feather alignment on the edge of the airsacs. The airsacs will be a bright orange fading into a magenta around the edges, within the airsacs outer layer you should see various colored blood viens of course the smaller tha airsac the more and closer you will see the viens and more textures like the texture on grapefruits.
The ears should pretty well be straight up over the head and the head almost level, wings will be dropped down primaries dragging or almost dragging the ground.
The Combs over the eyes can be rebuilt with Apoxie Sculpt, I would scrape bright yellow chaulk to color the Apoxie Sculpt with.
This should get you started well, of course if you now decide to do a nice Prairie chicken is beyond your skills.
Email me and we will work something out where you can learn how to.
I made a lot of mistakes learning to get to this point.
If you send an email I can show you a pic of it booming on a simple base.
Item # ECB1
John, you jumped on Chris a little to quickly; he was talking about the
eye combs.
Mns, Chris's method will work, also, some will glue pipe cleaner there or a piece of Terri cloth towel.All to be tinted the proper color.