I have a question. I dropped off a mule deer last season at this local shop who's been doing taxidermy for like 30 years. My concern is the couple times I've been in there, is the rot type smell. I mean I know it can't smell like roses in there because they do hundreds of mounts of all kinds per year. My question is, does this mean they practice bad taxidermy? Of is this normal? Thank you.
P.S. This same shop did a deer for my dad in the 80's, and it turned out nice, and has held up well.
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I guess you answered your own question! I myself like to keep my shop clean. Customers rarely come into the work area and are usually only permitted in the showroom/office. I have had some fowl smelling things brought in but for the most part there is only a chemical odor. The smell could be caused by a variety of things such as garbage (ie, scraps of meat, fat, etc), bad specimens, chemicals...yada yada yada. I would say if you are happy with the work he did for your father than great, stick with him. Judge him on the quality of work that he performs...not what his shop smells like. It sounds like he has been in business for over 20 years so he must be doing something right. If you fathers deer is still looking good after 20 years than it is doubtful he is taking care of specimens improperly. Good luck.
Matt, thats I guess they way most shops smell. Over the years I have visited many, many shops and they all smell like spoiled meat.
I think it is because the salting drains body fluids from hides, bird hides must dry after mounting along with all the other things, that go on in the shop.
I mop my shop twice daily when skinning animals, I use carbolic acid in the water, it kills any bacteria and adds a nice clean smell to the place. I have tried everything else under the sun but Carbolic acid is the only thing to kill the smell produced by the bacteria that live in body fluids, soaps just dont cut the stuff.
It's probably the used salt. In the past I would have piles of used salt and would try to get as much from it as possible, but my shop always had that "soiled salt" smell, for that reason I don't keep used salt around anymore.
I've been doing taxidermy for over 45 years and my shops have NEVER smelled like that. If I live a hundred more, they won't smell like that. If I get a roadkill or a putrid animal in, it goes right back out the door. When I flesh fresh animals, the meat scraps are sprinkled with DP (borax) and put in a container that's taken out every night. They're then taken to a local butcher who hold it for a rendering plant.
My shop is always clean unless I'm right in the middle of something. ALL GOOD SHOPS are that way. If it waddles and quacks, it's a duck. If it stinks, its a sure sign of the individual who owns it. Quality shouldn't have to smell EVER.
I don't think a shop should stink of rotting meat. I would think you might smell blood or bowel, but rotting smells should be out of the question. Poor shop practices often result in this bad smell. For most of us, we don't want this to happen. This smell is from bacterial growth and most of us try to avoid this at all cost. We don't want skins that the hair slips or just how it may affect our customers or family members if it is a home shop. The only rotten smell that should be detectable are from skulls being prepared through maceration or with dermistid beetles. Most of us do this out of the shop. To sum it up you shouldn't smell rotten flesh at the taxidermy shop unless it is intentional from skull preparation. Some normal smells might be blood, bowel from an open intestine,normal animal scent (the most offensive being a skunk)or maybe even chemical smells. I wipe down my shop and mop the floors at least three times a week. I can't stand poor work conditions. Maybe just ask this shop and find out what they say.
My shop NEVER smells like anything but a uptown gallery 99.9% of the time. . I think there is zero excuse for a sour meat smell in a taxidermy shop; and yes I think its a bad but probably accurate refection on the overall quality of the work in the shop.
If you walk into a shop that has a bad "rotten meat or rotten hide" smell, I would turn around. There is a place to skin, flesh and salt and a place to do your mounting, and for me they are not the same place. Any taxidermist, in my opinion who invites clients into his shop that smells rotten has made a mistake. How many "good" shops clean, flesh, skin etc. in the same place that they do their mounting in? The same place that they invite the public in? Just think about it. This is poor judgement for the taxidermist, it is bad business and represents the trade in a very negative way.
My salt shed is in a small seperate building. Its the sour salt and a build up of hides, esp. if the taxidermist buys and sells raw furs that you probably smell. I have never been in a shop that did quality work and also smelled of anything.
I DO...doesn`t always smell pretty, but I don`t have much choice working out of a 18 x 20 shop...Give me a break...not all of us have a 40 x 60 shop to work out of...and the last thing I`m concerned about is representing the taxidermy trade by worrying about how my shop smells. If you catch me on a busy day during rifle and trapping season your are going to see some dead crap on the floor---if my clients have kids with them I will ask them to stay in the house..young kids don`t need to see the anatomy of a coyote carcass..Yes my dreams are to be like you BIG taxidermist working on their 150 deer in my 40 x 60 shop, and of course I want it to smell preeettty...but right now I`ll just keep winning blues in the master`s division from my stinky little shop in stinky little ol Mulvane stink`n Kansas...LOL---half you big operators don`t even touch your own work anymore---that`s more pathetic than preaching BS over a slight smell in somebodies shop..
I'm currently in a 25x25 two story garage (storage overhead), but I spent one helluva lot of time in a 10x12 section of the basement TO MY HOUSE. Before I worked in a 10x12 shed, so size really doesn't matter. None of those work shops had any smell to them, certainly not my basement room under the bedrooms and dining area.
Why is it when someone tries to correct a perception they're jumped on for some bullsh1t reasoning like that. I'm glad you're proud of your work and I'm happier you're good at it, but I wouldn't care if you were the King of England. If you work in a sh1thouse, you're catering the clientele who don't have any better sense of smell than you do. I'll bet you're not on the Chamber of Commerce tour guide.
I do the dirty stuff outside, skinning, fleshing, salting all outside in a 10 x 10 shed. Tan and mount inside in a 10 x 12 room. The only smell inside is the occasional bondo, and the window is open when I use that. If you ever walked into an old greasy restaurant, you think twice about eating there. The only place of work that should stink is in the milking parlor in the barn. If the customer is keeping their trophy in their house, it will smell like the shop it came from. IF I ever get into a larger shop, I still will keep the dirty work in a different room.
I am basicly a one man operation and always have been; I usually have only one helper off and on. My shop area is fairly small for the volume and type of work I do, the size of a two car garage with high ceilings. I also have blue ribbons on the wall. All the shops in my area produce really nice work and charge well for it (500 to 650 for deer heads) and no one has a smelly shop and we all take in more work than we probably should. Dewane Dewey is just of them for example, you can lick the floor in his shop any day of the week even during hunting season, his shop is smaller than mine. His work is also awesome. All the taxidermists around here borrow eyes, forms etc off each other and everyone gets along and visits each other. I suggest that you evaluate your shop and create a better enviroment for yourself and your clients because if your shop smells you have no Valid excuse for it. Get a small shed to put out in your back for those carcases and salting, that move alone will eliminate 98% of the problem.
Sorry if I offend you travis but that's life. I am not a big taxidermist, but I am a part time, clean, professional, award winning, sucessfull and proud one. I do have a 30 x 40 shop, but I also have a 10'x10' skinning shed. It has a concrete floor and completly lined with a washable interior and cost me only about $1,200 to build. If you are a taxidermist and you have a smelly shop you are doing the trade and the rest of us a bad deed. If someone brings somthing into my shop that stinks it goes out into the skinning shed. If it is rotten it goes home with the client. All the skulls stay in the skinning shed until they can be frozen or cleaned. All of the hides stay in the skinning shed until they can be frozen or sent to the tannery. Any taxidermist can operate that way. Face it dead stinky stuff in view of the public is dumb, stupid, offensive and does do our trade a bad deed.
Sorry guys and gals but this is very basic and to many of us dont care and that is one of the reasons that we taxidermists have a bad, red neck, unprofessional view to the general public.
My Gawd I don`t know what kind of stinch your refering too but it must be bad...I work anywhere from 50 to 60 hours a week as an inspector on aircraft on 2nd shift and do my taxi work in the mornings. If I had time everyday I sure would clean my shop daily...BUT as George always explains us "spoiled generation" don`t know the meaning of work ethic... I was raised in the drywall biz from the age of 10. My Dad is 67 and still hangs it, and tapes it. Hard work never bothered me..you guys are so full of craptola that I can smell you from here..if you have one deer head drying in your shop it puts off a chemical smell..you all have just been doing it so long you don`t smell it anymore--so basically you must stink yourself...there are mornings during trapping season that I skin 5 cats,4 or 5 yotes, ect--now skinning outside would be dandy if it wasn`t 20 degrees outside..My shop doesn`t smell like a meat locker but it doesn`t always smell pretty either---guess you guys don`t have your nose in front of a coyotes a$$ very often uh? My point is clearly that if you think your shop doesn`t have a curious odor to it your full of crap..it`s there wether you do right old farts beleieve it or not...ya must be cleaning your fish outside too uh? Must be fun with 2 million flies crawling all over ya--how about drying those fish? Got your own fish drying room? Oh I know if you remove all the meat the fish won`t smell--Bullcrap...You preachers need to take a little closer look at yourselves and reality---you can perfume a pig but it`s still a pig...
dead stinky stuff in view of the public is dumb? Sorry I don`t consider my house to be "PUBLIC" domain...when I`m knee deep in deer and mammals to skin I don`t worry about who`s showing up at my door..I`m skinning and getting stuff in the freezer ASAP...they can just throw theirs on top of the stack and I`ll have it in the freezer in a few hours and worry about the skulls later...
One of the biggest taxidermist in KS operates just a few miles from me..you walk in his shop and it`s a freak`n mess( makes mine look like George`s I`m sure)...I could only guess what he grosses a year but it`s more than any 3 of you yahoos put together..so maybe this comes down to perception--would you be successful if your shop wasn`t spotless? or scentless...you won`t know because your doing it the way you prefer---so are we...spotless no...a little rough around the edges ---yes...I`ll have my 40 x 60 by fall this year where I can get more organized and maybe ease some of your worries about my stinky shop...meanwhile go sweep the floor and pat yourself on the backs
All comes back to being too damned lazy to clean your mess as you go. I skin my fish and pickle them, and mount them in the shop and there's no STENCH. I shave my hides raw and dispose of the meat and clean the tables after EVERY ONE I DO and there's no stench. I tan with JRTS which has a sweet lanolin smell and there's no stench. I skin small game out and dispose of their carcasses immediately and there's no stench. I defat ducks and wipe down the wheel immediately and there's no stench. And I spent 30 years being a GI with odd shifts, work days and work schedules and MY SHOP NEVER HAD A STENCH. I've never had a separate area where I kept customers away from work I was doing and a very large number of them, their WIVES, GIRLFRIENDS,AND KIDS have commented that their preconceived notion of what a taxidermy shop looked like were ruined since MY SHOP HAD NO WEIRD SMELLS.
None? I see the problem George, your nose no longer works. If you carry a yote through the door your shop stinks, immediately. Before you skin it, clean up the mess, do whatever it is you do. Same goes for cats, foxes, fish, even turkeys. Animals stink, and when you skin em it gets worse. I keep my shop clean of meat as well but as Mr. Travis said, to a person that hasn't spent their life in a taxidermy shop, there is a smell. Just my $.02
"My concern is the couple times I've been in there, is the rot type smell."
Yes, Cole, they do smell when you bring them in but they don't smell like rot. When they're skinned out, I always clean up and if there's any lingering "musky" smell, I use Neutron Industries industrial air freshening products that eliminate odor. My shop does not have any lingering stench. PERIOD.
Just an an added note Travis. When I have a deer drying in the shop, it actually adds a pleasant small to the room.
I use the Wildlife Gallery for my tanning, and there is no chemical smell. It's more of a sweet or "clean" smell actually.
I guess some of this comes down to what you use for preservation and etc.
As far as the rotting smell, any way you look at it, that can't be a good situation, and trying to keep a clean shop is part of the deal for me I guess. Not saying it's spotless, but if I'm running late into the eveving or what not, if nothing else, I remove all scraps, and wipe down my skinning table after a quick spray of water/lysol mix. All of the meat and scraps go into the woods that night..just works for me, but then again, I'm sure I do not have nearly the workload of many of you on here. Just a part time thing for me, which I still enjoy doing.
Just my two cents
The point is Travis if you have a professional business you should have a clean shop. If your open to business you should not have ROTTEN smells in your shop. Agreed that taxidermists do deal with rotten stuff, everyone knows that, but it is how you handle it. If your doing taxidermy in the house then your right it is not public domain. But I for one keep my operatin clean, it shows, it is professional and customers see and reckognize it.
I assure you that if I have a clean and professional shop and the guy down the road has dead stinkin stuff on his floor, and the quality of work is I will get more clients and better money.
Also as for your work ethic, congradulations, your not the only hard working guy out there, believe me.
Stinky shops just plain suck.
Randy
I live in Alabama and it is pretty warm here; I don't think it is feasible to have a seperate skinning shed without AC and that seems a bit pricey to me. I remove salt and waste daily and that seems to work ok, as George stated.
It may depend on where you are geographically(?)
Wow, Look what I started! Thanks for the input. It's too late to look for someone else, my deer should be ready in a couple weeks. I was just curious. This taxidermy doesn't have much of a choice to do messy stuff out back, or outside, as it sit's in the middle of a very busy city street. The first time I was there to drop off the deer, I went in through the back, and that's when I first caught the smell, only in the back, then one day I dropped by to the front, and I could smell it, but maybe I was already expecting the smell. The back of the shop was not real messy, they had several tanks and containers with liquid in there in one section, and I think that's where the smell was coming from. I'm assuming from skulls soaking in stuff. All in all their shop was not dirty. It was what you'd expect from a full time busy shop such as that. There's probably at least 6 full time staff there, and they are always busy. I don't think they would be as busy as they are after 30 years, if anything was questionable.
You guys entertain the hell outta me. If some guys shop stinks, I really don't care. Don't know why some of you make such a fuss over stupid stuff, but it's really entertaining. Enough said, someone will be wanting to bust my balls. Keep up the good work guys.
Lendall Chatellier
www.wildlifearttax.com
I do not want to open a can of worms, but... I bought a very large buffalo robe for our living room. It smells so strong of chemical that it resides in the shed. Is there someting I can do for it? Was it improperly tanned?