i wanted to know y'all's favorite way to mount a large flying duck to to a wall mount, the two books i have don't cover that, and the last mount i tried was too wobbly. any help will be really appreciated.
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First of all you need a wire that is heavy enough to support it and I always mount my flying birds on a piece of drift wood as this is the easiest way . If you find the bird is still wobbly , then add another wire to the bird . You can do this by just passing the wire through the outside of the bird to the wood but move the feathers to the side before pushing it all the way in . Rick
There are a number of causes for a wobbling flying mount. No matter how large the wire, a flying bird on a wall or other places will have certain movement depending on how far the bird is suspended away from the attachment point. A bird with the belly toward the wall can be closer to the attachment that one where the wing tip is toward the wall, thus one will "wobble"/move more than the other. For birds the size of a large mallard or a pacific eider, I use 6-8 guage wire to attach to drift wood or other base. The bird still will move a little if you shake it as a function of the length of the wire. Here are some things I find useful for me. Make sure the wire is attached firmly and hot glued to the manikin, suspend the mount only as far as necessary to get the attitude you desire, drill a hole of the correct size through the drift wood - sometimes folks drill to big a hole, attach the wire firmly and staple to the drift - I then epoxy as well if I can not bend the wire back into the drift wood. Heavy wire is difficult to bend. In most cases, with big birds such as large geese, swans, turkeys and so forth, I pre-bend the wires and pre-attach them to the manikin to make absolutely sure it is secure. The idea of more than one wire also works, just harder to hide if that is an issue for you. Another thing that works is to select the drift wood such that a branch extends away from the wall and attach through this branch - thus the mount is closer to the attachment point and will have less "wobble" Good Luck.