I am a Naturalist at a State Park in Kentucky and we are looking to improve our collection of "dead things" for our educational programs and nature center. We have just received a road kill Great Horned Owl and would eagerly accept any advice as to how we should go about preserving the wings, talons, and skull. Please help. Thanks!
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Contact a local taxidermist and have the bird done professionally. We don't have magic elixirs or potions to turn tissue into fairy dust and it really can't be explained well enough to preclude problems down the road. Pay someone to do it correctly.
I sent you an email.
Thanks for the quick responses - sorry Coach that my email wasn't correct in my previous message and I didn't receive your message. Please email me again if you get a chance. George, I would love to pay someone to do it correctly, but we are talking about the state government and budgets and all that. The bottom line is that we don't have the money to get it done professionally as much as I would love to have it done. The state doesn't seem to place our programming or the condition of our nature center as a high priority so I am trying to what I can. I wasn't looking for magic elixirs or potions - just some advice and I thank you for that.
I do most of the work for this dinky state and I hear the excuse that the messengers like you are constantly given. Yet the bureaucrats sitting in those plush offices always find enough money to procure a new Suburban to drive and go on junkets to far off places to schmooze with their buddies. Fortunately, here, I have enough contacts within the department to pick names and faces and tell them things they don't want to hear. Then I follow it up with newspaper articles that they cringe over when their names get into print.
The Pittman Robertson Act provides your state and all others with more than sufficient funds to use on "outreach" programs as well as "hunter education" programs. I realize that you're but the messenger, but I know for a fact that you're using words given to you by someone who knows better. I'd suggest that you contact the NSSF as well as QDM who also fund such programs. There IS money available, you're just being kept in the dark as to how to acquire it or to expose them for suppressing it in the first place.
I sent you the email to the new address. Good luck
Rob
I mailed you, hope it works and it came in time, reply if you have any questions