Taxidermist Lost Antlers..What should I do?

What happened to them?

 

My greatest fear is losing a customers trophy. Nothing should ever be left outside, un-watched, for even a minute. I have a fence around by skull processing area to protect them from being removed by animals. The real value of your antlers is sentimental, and there is no way to fully compensate for that. Sorry to hear of your bad experience.

 

In the same way Joey I allways worrie about stuff like that and I treat all of them the same no matter if there 170s or just a small rack they still mean the same to the person that shot the deer so I keep mine locked up if I'm not out there with them and then I still worrie about someone brakeing in and stealing them you can't trust anyone these days and that's something you can never replace sorry to hear that

 

if you went on a guided hunt or paid for the hunt in any way to acquire them, then i would ask for the cost of the hunt back so you could go again.

 

I think if you have pictures and measurements your antlers can be replicated pretty close by someone like Tom Sexton. Stuff happens, I would offer this if it happened to my customer

http://www.northamericanwhitetail.com/tactics/off-season-tactics/huntingtactics_naw_antler_0909/

 

$200.00 a point/tine then $1000.00 trophy fee.​

 

This was posted twice and Jim Tucker and I both responded to the second post.

"I'm aboard with Jim. That may be the nightmare many of us have, but because of that we take an inordinate amount of time to insure it doesn't happen. For a professional taxidermy to "lose" a client's rack is simply inexcusable under any reasoning."

 

Not any more on the latter. Inexcusable.

I would go the replica route with someone that is highly qualified as mentioned in the other thread. That's really your only option. The taxidermist should pay the difference of the added cost at the very least.

 

Never lost one but have looked past tags, miss sorted, couldn't sleep at nights. I misplaced a rack a few years ago, had customer come over and look through the rack pole with me, racks from no pick-ups, road kills, bought, given, found, etc. He picked through them and found one, said it was his. His initials were RK and RK was for road kill in my world, also it was mounted once and after that customer never picked it up after picking up his first deer it was marked RK and removed from mount and in the barrel it went.
I mounted it, he picked it up, loved it. Not long ago I was sorting through no-pick up racks etc. making room, plain as day there was his rack, tagged with his name & info, his deer for sure, have no idea how we missed it the many times we looked. It was a lot smaller than the one he said was his. Actually called him and he said the one he picked up was fine.
Some people !

 

If this guy was a pro he would of had insurance to cover that theft. Unfortunately even insurance has little value in this case, 170 is nice but a no big deal rack unless a record. He at least cant take the memories, that's why I hunt and fish and to eat them yummy critters.

 

You cannot recover the cost of the hunt. this has been through court a lot. The hunt was enjoyed and you experienced it. That is done.

The only thing you could recover is the value of the antlers.

Now ask why to hell they left the antlers outside, thats the stupidest excuse I ever hear.

The only time antlers should be outside is while the are int he pot at temps no animal could touch without major damage ot their mouth.

 

You smoking serious dope. That would be a hell of a 170 class deer.

 

Sounds like the taxidermist screwed up bad. However none of us are perfect and bad things happen to good people. I have an insurance policy that is written specifically for taxidermists. It does have bailes coverage which means coverage for property of others in my possession. It covers fire, theft, water damage, loss of a freezer and its contents and a lot more. However if a customers antlers, mount etc, is damaged or lost the insurance company will pay. The payment schedule is calculated on what it would cost to buy or replace a similar item. It does not cover sentimental value, only replacement value. Additionally if a client has a really big trophy it will not cover trophy value. A specific policy to cover the "trophy" is required. As far as I know this type of policy is standard for businesses including taxidermy businesses. In summary insurance policies rarely cover sentimental value.

If it were me I would work with the client and come up with a mutually agreeable value with the above in mind.

I am glad I have this policy. I had a freezer go out. It had everything from a deer cape to a LS stone sheep in the freezer. Wow was I scared. Fortunately as for big items I only had to replace the feet on the stone and feet on a LS mountain goat. I found some feet on taxi.net. I lost some deer and elk capes and a few African capes. I got a $5,000 check from the insurance company and was able to replace all the damaged items. Very scary. Get a policy of your own.

 

I agree that it is inexcusable to lose a set of antlers. I have misplaced them before also. As for value, in my state of Mississippi, it is illegal to sell a set of antlers, therefore, their monetary value is zero. That being said, I would do whatever I feasibly could to make it up to the customer. A reproduction set built to match the original sounds like fair and equitable compensation.

 

Did this happen in the era before freezer alarms? They're like $15 bucks on Ebay. I only do fish, but I don't carry insurance b/c I'm very confident with the freezer alarms and regular battery replacements that nothing will ever be lost. I self insure. In other words, even though I'm not liable for any losses as my customers sign a contract that states so. If I were ever to screw up - say for instance a freezer goes while we're on vacation for a week and nobody is around to check the freezer alarms (although I have a neighbor that checks when we're gone), then I would do the right thing and purchase replicas for all my customer's that were impacted. With animals you don't have the luxury of purchasing replicas for replacements. So in my mind it's even MORE important to have freezer alarms for you full service shops. Your name is everything in this business. And in this day and age there's really no reason to lose or have any specimens spoil. UNLESS, you're shipping animals or animal hides to be tanned and it's out of your control. I can see that. I can't think of too many other reasons that would be acceptable in my mind for losing or damaging a customer's trophy. JMO...

 

Have you ever had to use that contract to defend yourself Marty? They are hardly worth the paper they are written on. I question if you actually believe in them, if you did, you probably wouldn't say that you would buy replicas for replacements, even though it would be the "Right" way to handle it.
To the OP, does this taxidermist have a legit business IE, licensing, if required and all of the things that go with that? Or did you use a guy that somebody you know knows and does this on the side. I'm not asking that you out this person here but please answer my question without doing so, it may hurt your chances of getting anything out him.
Most of us that operate a legit business would do what we can to eliminate the possibility of customer's trophy being lost and on the odd circumstance it did, we would do what we could to satisfy the customer the best we could.

 

3Bears - as mentioned, I have never lost anything - so "no" I have never had to defend myself. And I also know the legalities of them signing a waiver is probably unenforceable - but acts moreso as a deterrent. I would bet the bulk of those that have lost somethings (and had) a similar disclaimer had the bulk of their customer's not even attempt to question their contract because the vast majority do not know it's lip service and after all, they signed it (and probably never read the fine print). And most do not want to bother with hiring a lawyer and file a law suit to find out...

 

I figured that you would probably give a response something like that. I am also curious if you know anyone that has used one as defense.