whitening skulls blotches

Hard to say, but I would imagine you have areas that still have grease. Try soaking the skull for a while in a solution with Dawn and see if that clears it up.

 

Looks like grease to me. I would soak it in a degreaser it or mist a light coat of white paint over the entire thing to balance it out and then poat a seal coat on it.

 

Looks like grease, degrease it in a dawn solution or other degreaser, I would not paint it but that's just me.

 

Some take a few weeks of soaking to get them cleaned. I have 3 in degreaser now and after 3 soakings a week each there's still a bunch of grease on top of water and around antlers at water line. Check when you cut the skull for a mount and check the cut area in front, wet and greasy looking inside of bone. Not going to come out with a quick washing.

 

Don't try to "speed up" anything regarding bones... bones are a process that you can't rush or you'll seriously risk the integrity of the bone. Get an aquarium heater or bucket/tank heater, rig it up to 115 F and add some dawn... replace as the water gets cloudy or greasy looking. Deer aren't very fatty animals so it shouldn't take long, but it's down to the individual animal.

 

The skull looks wet like it has been pulled out of the boiling pot and the water is evaporating. But, if you've left it out of the water long enough for it to dry, then it's "wet" with grease. Ever lay fried bacon on a paper towel? Every part of the towel that soaked up grease is a little more transparent than the rest of the towel. That is what is happening with your skull. Until the grease is gone, it won't look better.

 

If you plan on doing a fair amount of skulls, it would definitely be a worthwhile investment to get an aquarium heater. I order the Aqueon brand on Amazon, and they're fairly inexpensive. From looking at your photo, it almost just looks like the skull is not fully dry. How long are you leaving it out to dry before assuming that the blotchiness is grease? Bone takes quite a while to dry, at least a couple days. Until they're fully dry, they appear to be somewhat blotchy in the dried versus still wet parts.


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I have 100, 150 and 200 watt aquarium heaters depending on the size of the tank. They only go up to I think 89 degrees or so out of the box, but you can pull the knob that you turn that controls the temp out and mess with the mechanism below it. Basically what I do is turn it all the way up, remove the knob and put it back it and the lowest setting, then turn it all the way up again. I keep an aquarium thermometer in there to gauge what temp the water is. I've gotten them up to 115 no problem.

 

It looks like grease to me. Often you won't notice any grease floating on top, it just gradually emulsifies into the water and makes it cloudy. A few days of manually changing out the water isn't very long at all.