Hair slippage behind the ears of a WT

Looking for advice...

I've just mounted my 3rd Whitetail and I've been having some problems with hair slippage.
The first mount turned out great, but both the 2nd and 3rd deer had slippage behind one ear (both times around the size of a quarter) which I only noticed when I came around to mounting them on the manikin.

The first time it happened, I hoped maybe bacteria had got to it before I received it from the customer, but now that its happened in the exact same place on the next deer, makes me think it has to be something I'm doing wrong.


I will go over my process and see if any of you can point me in the right direction as to any mistakes I'm making...


1) Receive frozen deer cape and head from customer
2) Wait for entire thing to be ALMOST thawed and skin out the head, turn lips and ears
3) Freeze it for another time
4) Defrost it in acid (until its just thawed)
5) Flesh it with flesher (takes around an hour)
6) Put it on a plastic sheet covered board and salt liberally (board is tipped at an angle so moisture runs off for 4-6 hours
7) Quick rinse in water and straight into pH checked pickle solution (Mckenzies Ultimate acid), for 3 days....making sure it is weighted down in the solution and moved around every day to reagitate it
8) Take it out, do a final fleshing with flesher (takes around 40 minutes)
9) Put it back in the acid (pH checked) until the next day
10) Take hide out of acid and neutralise it in baking soda/water solution for 20-30 minutes
11) Drain and damp dry with towel
12) Spread Mckenzies tanning oil over the hide liberally and leave according the the instructions for 4-6 hours.
13) Rinse off tanning oil, drain and damp dry by rolling up in a towel


Sometimes I will then leave the hide in a very cold room overnight. The next day I will then take my time patching up any holes with super glue/ hide thread and I will also Bondo the ears.

Then usually I will put the hide back into a cold room and mount within the next day or 2.

 

Thanks for all the replies. This has been very helpful.

Tom: I was talking about the back of the ear at the base- right where the Ear Butt would go.
They definitely slipped as once I noticed the missing patch, I could further peel off a small area of the surrounding hair with a fine layer of skin stuck to it. I hastily purchased Stop Slip and sprayed liberally.

I do try my best to be gentle around the ear area but I think Mike has hit the nail on the head when he talked about inverting the ears. I think I am leaving them inverted at most stages throughout the process. I recall thinking to myself that I would leave them inverted so that the salt, then pickle, then tan could really get to and penetrate the hide, but in hindsight, I guess having the ears inverted for days on end, that delicate outer skin with the hair on is just being contorted and bent back unnaturally combined with moisture being stuck in there.

My husband and I are self taught taxidermists only using DVD's and by watching literally hundreds of hours worth of videos on Youtube. It sure is a learning process! The thawing in pickle method we did indeed get from Brian Hendricks via his youtube channel.