Wattle

I have just mounted my first pheseant and I am please with the finished article. The only problem that I have encountered is that the fine red feathers of the wattle around the eye have become dislodged. I split the neck and popped out the skull to clean but when I came to put it together I must have put my fingers on the wattle and moved the little feathers.

Is this a case of my man-handling the head and dislodging the wattle? or is it just bacterial action?

What is the remedy to my problem please?

Kindest regards

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Been there, done that

It's slippage usually caused by too much handling. The warmth of your hand sets that in motion and unless you do the whole thing when you first start it, that's even more likely to happen.

Try this

Laurie,

I have had this happen and here's what I do. Mount the bird and finish as you would any other bird. Position the wattles and let them dry. When dry, I mix up some apoxie sculp with bright red or deep red water based paint. Mix just a small pea size batch with a drop or 2 of paint. The final color of the mix should be close to the final color of the wattle. Place the mix on the wattle in the bare spot and smooth out. You need to leave the repair site sculp with some thickness so you can texture. I use a sharp tool or pin to put texture into the repair. You want to make it look like the fine feathers around it. Once you are happy with the texture and it matches the surrounding area, let it start to set. I wiat a while let it set so it's firm, but not hard. I then take the red paint and, with a brush, paint the wattle and the repair area. The last step is to put some of those blue feathers back in. To do this, I use a blue roller ball pen and use that to put the color in. Use reference for this part. I have made this repair many times with great success. Good Luck. Doug

Thank you

Thank you very much for the information, I will try the repairs when the bird has dried but luckily the blue feathers under the eye have survived. Do I need to wear thicker glooves to reduce the heat from my fingers?

Kindest regards

Gloves won't help, Laurie

You just need to be faster. LOL. I try to skin my birds out just as soon as they thaw and I don't dawdle. Pheasants take more head work in skinning than most, so you really have to be quick. Just limit your contact time.

OR do as Danny Owens

I would venture to say you might have been a little rough.Goerge was partly right "too much handleing"..
The inverting of the head is sooo simple.Flesh the neck as you work the area and the head will come through with no damage..Just take a look at how Danny Owens does it in his video. A peice of string and passivly passing the head through a little at a time will do the trick.. After all if a "master" like Danny can pass this on a a confernce it cant be a secret.
Doug's trick is a great idea as well....
Roosters are a pretty tough bird,

Some dont invert

Not that this has anything to do with the subject but I have found some birds will not invert without tearing the skin. I have found a few birds that the neck is just too small. It seems that some of the gun club birds just cant be inverted. I have not found a wild one that I couldnt invert.

Light fingers

I will try to be more light fingered and quicker at it as well. If I have any more problems I will get back to you. Thank you for all your help and suggestions

Kindest regards

Inverting heads

I don't think I have ever seen Danny not be able to turn a head on an upland game bird (and most ducks). He does this by cleaning the neck skin on the wire wheel before trying to turn it. By the time he works his way up the neck, the head turns almost by itself. If you are not cleaning the neck skin well- you will tear the neck!