Our taxidermist hosed three lopes for us. The hair on all three stands up in areas thru out the necks. "must have been in rut" was the answer to my ? as to why. Any suggestions to correct this? Any quesses as to what went wrong?
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Are you familiar with antelope hair patterns?
They have a lot of cowlicks that are supposed to be there.
Assuming the rough areas are not part of the normal hair patterning on these mounts, there are aq couple common reasons for hair sticking straight out on mounts.
1- Poor sewing, hair tangled up in the stitches will not lay properly
2- Improper handling, either before or AFTER it left the shop!
when hanging or handling mounts it is very common for the
inexperienced to lift the mounts by placing a hand on the neck
and one on the brisket; the ends of the fingers on the "neck" hand
will usually slide up the neck during the the process of lifting
and hanging the mount. When this happens the hairs are bent and
shoved back to the skin; if this happens the hair can kink or wad
up, causing the hair on top of it to stand outward.
This can usually be remedied by combing with a coarse comb; if
the problem was poor sewing your taxidermist may be able to
rehydrate the skin on a fresh mount and pound the seam flatter.
Mike pretty much summed it up ........the hair on the back of the neck does stand up though ........and also does in other places Mike mentioned....
Don't be too hard on your taxidermist I'm sure they did the best job he /she could have done........
most pronghorn are not slick like a deer. All the ones I get in in my studio have thick winterhair and look sort of bristly (is that a word? LOL). They also have a mane running down the back of their neck. I have yet to come across an antelope that is slick.
A buddy of mine had a friend that had a deer mounted. I went over to see the work and it looked awful. The hair stood up all over in odd spots. I asked if he drove it home in the back of his truck. Not only did he just throw it in the back of the truck, it actually fell out!
On your antelope, there is a possibility that the cape did not fit the form correctly or was not line up properly, both would make the hair stick up. But without seeing it, one can only speculate if it was mounted correctly.