Hello, Im mounting a longhorn later this afternoon, and just thought I would check to see if anyone had any idea on how to make the form look less "cow faced". The animal is a very old steer, and what I'll probably end up doing is just building some parts of the face up with clay to make it look a litle fuller. If anyone has any ideas, they would be greatly appreciated.
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It IS a cow, isn't it? If it's a longhorn, it will how a long face, but the Herefords tend to be like cape buffalo.
It's a steer. cows have a long skinny face compared to a steer.
Get a form that is about 1/2 inch longer in the eye to nose measure. cut 1/2 inch out of the face and bondo it back together. blend with clay. (I did that to a deer once and it worked great!) you can also check out http://www.TaxidermyReference.com/ they have some great ref. pics. good luck Joe
In its truest sense a COW is a female bovine while a bull is the male and a steer is the castrated male. Mine being bigger than yours usually isn't contingent of genital removals. Longhorn CATTLE have cows and bulls, otherwise, we wouldn't have CALF longhorns to grow up into longhorn cattle. And though much of the longhorn has been bred out of today's versions (I've seen wooly longhorns a couple times), the classic Western longhorn is a "cow faced" lean animal. Taxonomically, the longhorn (which was brought to America by Christopher Columbus, by the way) is a slow growing cattle that did thrive in the warmer, dryer areas of the Southwest. Cold tended to be the killer of longhorns and when cattle farmers discovered that the wooly Hereford could survive better in the frigid winters and grew much faster than the longhorn, it almost disappeared from the "wild West" in the early 1900's. Today it tends to be raised for aesthetic reasons, but the breed is still rangy, slow growing, lean, and long faced. And I'll bet you can't find that on Taxidermy Reference.com.
Well I took care of the problem, i built up the nose area with clay, turned out great, but then i noticed the eyes of the form were too close to the nose, now il have to move them back through the eye holes, damn the shrinking of a dry skin. Anyway, I would have to dissagree with george, last winter i did a longhorn cow, the form i had turned out perfect, an old rancher (the one im doing the present longhorn for) even commented on how "cow faced" it looked this longhorn is a steer, the face is for sure much broader, I built it up probably about an inch just below the ridge of the nose, where the veins are, and it made look excelent. I did this mainly because he made a comment about another longhorn steer he saw mounted that looked too much like a cow. Presto: happy customer! I just wish I could show that there is a difference between the narrow faced cow and a broader faced steer of the same breed.
I'll be waiting with bated breath on THAT one. You really do need to take some physiology classes.