I can usaully treat about 3 whitetail shoulder capes with stop rot before the I run out. Am I using too much it is a 32oz bottle
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... he would say No you need to use more and get it down to one bottle per deer cape and two per squirrel..LOL sorry Glen
I think my directions said 3-5 oz per cape is plenty, so I would say somewhere around 8 deer per bottle.
If you just use it on faces, or if the deer is freezer burnt all over, I get 3 to 4 deer per bottle.
I use it on the whole shoulder cape.
On a whitetail cape that is about 20" behind the ears, 5 ounces will cover pretty well. Measure out five ounces and see if you can't get a uniform spread like that.
Just brush it on and spread it out like as if you are painting on a thin film. You'll be able to see the reactions on the skin, so you can even adjust accordingly.
To give you another visual to go by so you can see if you are getting enough, take that same cape and turn it hair side out and lay it on a table or work bench top. An hour later you should have a damp place underneath the cape that matches up with where the cape was laying.
The above will about get you there if you are going to continue on through with working on the cape.
If you're going into the freezer with it, saturate the hair side of the ears also, and don't forget the inside of the ears, all the way down into the ear canal. I like to at least split the lip muscles with a scalpel blade and get the STOP-ROT brushed into the V slice. Brush on the epidermis around the eyes and the lacrimal gland. It doesn't hurt to hit just a tad more on the flesh side of those same areas. Cover the outside of your nose pad. All that would not take more than another ounce to maybe just a little more.
That's going to give you a LOT of protection against freezer burn. And as some of us have found out, when the freezer gets a little warm, you will still probably have a cape to mount. Paul E has the record for that one when he was evacuated during hurricane Katrina. Needless to say, those times are longer than what you are going to go through with routine thawing.
Too much STOP-ROT doesn't cause any problems anywhere that I know of except if you are going to salt dry. Too much will create a goo with all the liquid proteins that will make it harder for the salt to draw everything out of the skin.
Even that can be turned to advantage. Just submerge the cape in plain old water, swirl it around, drain, bag, tumble or spin the excess moisture out, then put it under salt. It will salt dry REAL fast by comparison like that. Keep that in mind for humid periods.
As Mr. T pointed out, there are other areas that you can play by eye, feel and smell. Skins that are already freezer burned/ dry, and those nasty green ones will take a little more. Those are always pretty easy to figure out as you go along, your own judgement will kick into gear.