Leucistic Coot: Be Careful what you wish for

Just finishing up my 4th year at Taxidermy. I don't do many mounts a year for my customers (about 35) so this year I decided to take a few Wholesale just to have something to do until hunting season. My first batch were all Woodducks. Second batch was a variety of Green heads and Widgeon a couple Merganser and a Diver or two. When he went to bring the third batch he asks if I'd ever done a Coot? I hadn't, but told him it's "just another bird".

So I get around to doing the Coot and I see on the outside tag it's labeled "Speckled Coot". So I googled that....got nothing, which I thought was weird. So I unwrap it and realized pretty quick that I had no idea what it was. So...I went to my go-to bird question guy... Spencer 2. He says Google Leucistic Coot.

I have always been jealous of the bird guys getting to do the hybrids and crosses and cool stuff....and now...here I am....scared out of my mind. But wait....it gets worse.

Here's what I found when I thawed it out.



And here's what I had when I skinned it.



Now, even though I'm new...I would have trashed this if it wasn't a rare bird. So I sat down and sewed as best I could. Luckily...if you want to call it that there were still 2 strips of skin completely connected so at least I had a starting point.



So then it hit the wash and I was trying to get a body made. I started with a Shoveler.



I had to use a little smaller necking material with all the sewing I had done, but finally got it fixed up.



Then I casted a new head. Had to do a couple to get it right.





Got all the parts ready and the bird dried.



So once I got it mounted I called my Wholesale guy. I asked him to call his client and see if he would be willing to mount the Coot in a glass case. After a couple days (and advising the guy that he didn't have a Speckled Coot, but a Leucistic one)he called back and gave me the go ahead.





Obviously there were some neck feather issues, but overall I'm glad I got to do it.

For those of you just starting out dreaming of doing Brewers ducks, and Pintail Hybrids....be careful what you wish for.

 

Thanks y'all!

Wyatt, haha,....it was hard for me not to brush some water up on his feet though.