blown sqirrel ear? Can any squirrel masters help?

Submitted by ricric on 11/27/05 at 5:47 PM. ( rwvalley@hotmail.com ) 24.214.147.210


OK. I've never had this happen with my other 3 squirrel mount attempts, but here goes. I was trying to turn the ears with the plastic butterknife technique and a white thing popped through the top. Now I have two flaps of fur and in the center is a perfecly shaped ear that I assume is the cartilage. My question is: is there any way to save this mount? I'm not sure what to do now and I don't want to make it worse. I now have the skin pickling in the saf-t-acid mixture. Is there any hope of making the ears look right? I'm trying to get it as realistic as possible so I can't put a little hat on his head. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated as I never had this problem with my practice squirrels and this is a nice black phase fox squirrel that I shot last week. Thank you....Ric

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ricric

This response submitted by Jim B on 11/27/05 at 10:43 PM. ( ) 207.200.116.74

If I understand you right,you ripped the ear?If this is the case,make sure that the ear is completely turned,even though it's ripped.When you get ready to mount it,insert some epoxy putty for an earliner substitute.Shape this in the ear and pull the ripped skin back together as you are working.As you mount the squirrel and after,check and tune the ears periodically until the epoxy has set and you have the ear shape that you want.It may be workable for 3 hours or so.Never throw in the towell!


Thank you

This response submitted by ricric on 11/27/05 at 11:36 PM. ( ) 24.214.147.210

Thanks for the insight Jim B. I'll give it a try.


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