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Hides they seek

Things to know about taxidermy: Never say "stuffed." Those fish aren't real. It's an art. And the wild turkey is a real bear.

By ANDREW MEACHAM
Published May 20, 2005

It took Debbie Crisp 45 minutes to reel in the 51-pound kingfish that now graces a wall in her living room. For that tournament-winning catch in the early 1990s, Crisp won a 23-foot boat, motor and trailer.

But she wanted another kind of trophy - a permanent reminder of the fish. Crisp went in search of a taxidermist. Her search led her to Gene Dobbs Taxidermy in Seffner.

"He had every kind of animal I'd ever seen in my entire life," said Crisp, 44, of St. Petersburg.

Taxidermy began when hunter-gatherers wrapped animal skins around boulders in rituals. Today's science started about 200 years ago, when hunters started bringing trophies to upholstery shops. The trade has survived as craftsmen continue to refine their work and hunters seek to immortalize their kills.

They are a breed of do-it-yourselfers more likely to learn by DVD than Ph.D. Instead of studying for exams, they enter trade shows where unforgiving peers judge the finer points of eye protrusion or ear placement on a buck, or whether the fur lies flat against the form. For taxidermists, the thrill of the kill is in exquisitely creating a lifelike image of the animal. Their work will stay in demand as long as hunters shoot game.

Gene Dobbs took six months to convert Crisp's kingfish into a shiny, toothsome replica.

He used a fiberglass mold and an arsenal of tools from hammers to paintbrushes. Saltwater fish are seldom mounted because their oils corrode the skin. These days even freshwater fish are often photographed, measured and released instead of killed, said Eileen Durban of New Wave Taxidermy in Stuart.

"You want to make the customer proud of the piece," said Dobbs, 66. "It means a lot to them. They are going to hang it on their living room wall to remind them of their good times."

For hunters, the animal offering the biggest challenge is the buck, whose sensitivity and speed make for a difficult catch.

John Lewis operates his taxidermy shop, Buck Fever, out of a musty tin building in Fort Lonesome. A dozen or more deer, a diamondback rattler, a turkey and an otter pelt greet visitors. The deer look pensive, almost alert. Among them on the wall hovers the head of a snarling 400-pound boar, killed 8 miles from the shop.

There's a caribou in the work area from Quebec. The hunter is a regular customer. Word of mouth, the lifeblood of the taxidermist's business, has apparently been kind of Lewis. Other customers send game heads to him, frozen and salted, from Texas, Alabama and New York.

Lewis, 44, is entirely self-taught. He first tried his hand at age 16 by stuffing a raccoon with the contents of his grandmother's pillow.

"That raccoon looked like a rabied badger," Lewis said. Today the word "stuffed" makes most taxidermists wince. The correct term is "mounting," the practice of choice since the early 20th century, when artisans began pulling skins over molds.

Hunters and fishermen make up the bulk of a taxidermist's business; the rest are retailers, restaurants, museums and sentimental pet owners.

Only the antlers and skin of a deer mount are real. First, the taxidermist orders an anatomically correct polyurethane mannikin. Supply houses such as Research Mannikins in Oregon carry forms for elk, moose and all African animals, but deer mannikins are the biggest sellers.

Lewis takes precise measurements: nostril to lower eyelid. Neck circumference. Distance between eyes. He polls customers. Do they want the neck extended, as if sniffing something low to the ground? Will they pay extra for his time to score the veins so that they stand out through the fur?

Using a curved knife, he removes the meat from the skin. The hide is then tanned in the shop or at a tannery so that it looks like leather with fur attached.

During the two or three weeks it takes for deer skins to dry, there is much to do on the skull of the mannikin. Eyes, nose and lips are built up with clay or wax to simulate the animal's natural tissues. Antlers are glued onto the mannikin, with the top of the original skull attached. The taxidermist then bolts a wood block to a depression in the model's head, then drills screws through the deer's skull into the block. Eventually the skin of the animal slides over the mold, which has been coated with an epoxy.

Prices for a deer mount at Buck Fever run between $325 and $425. Prices for deer mounts elsewhere range from $350 to $500, estimates Shawn Logan, president of the Florida State Taxidermists Association. Wild boar cost slightly more. Prices for mounting fish range from $350 to $2,000.

Because the work is painstaking and good taxidermists are often backlogged, customers usually wait four to six months to get their finished product.

Taxidermists are nearly unanimous in their appraisal that birds - particularly the wild turkey, with its regal array of tail feathers - are the hardest species to mount.

Deer season ended in January. That puts the Lewis family about two-thirds of the way through mounting season.

Jeremy Lewis, 18, specializes in white-tailed deer. His father is grooming him to take over the 5-year-old business. Wife Zetha keeps the books. Even daughter Miranda, 10, is learning the craft; she makes deerskin purses from scraps.

Florida does not regulate taxidermy shops. Any taxidermist wanna-be can get an occupational license and set up shop. Reputable taxidermists struggle to separate themselves from those who cut corners.

Taxidermists who take shortcuts or who are not as meticulous can give the industry a bad name.

"There is a recourse program where if an NTA (National Taxidermists Association) taxidermist takes your money, he can be kicked out of the association," said president Mark Wilson. The country's largest taxidermy association, it is based in Slidell, La., and has held steady at 2,200 members in recent years.

"A lot of people are able to get into it as a side job, like in their garage, and charge a really low price," Logan, the Florida association president, said. "Some customers don't see the difference in the quality."

Few accredited colleges provide a degree in taxidermy. Piedmont Community College in Roxboro, N.C., a mainstay of taxidermy education, in April offered its final seminar. The continuing education director, Phyllis Gentry, says the school is "moving on to other things."

Even so, taxidermy leaders predict the field will not die any time soon. Just this year, the NTA picked up a new sponsor, and Web sites like www.taxidermy.net move instructional videos on every aspect of taxidermy.

With that kind of interest in the craft, poor workmanship is its own punishment, said Jack Thrumston, immediate past president of the Florida State Taxidermists Association. "Price cutters and people like that don't last long. It's the quality that sells."

Thrumston ought to know. Besides a wide variety of mounted fish and game, his backyard trailer stocks rolling racks of paints, clays, knives, hammers and chisels, a testament to years of trying to be the best.

Sportswoman Debbie Crisp also knows quality when she sees it.

More than a decade after they were caught, her kingfish and a replica of an enormous sailfish she once caught and released hang on her living room wall.

"You figure people do mounts all the time," she said. "But can they really capture it, can they really make it look like it is?" she asked, glancing at her kingfish. "That's perfection."

Taxidermists are artists, and everyone has a different style. Still, leaders in the field say there are certain benchmarks for assessing the quality of a taxidermist's work.

Grooming. A mount should look and smell clean.

Drumming: This is the trade term for glueing a hide onto the mannikin. The hide should be thin and lie flat against the form. If not done properly, the skin will crack.

Eye and ear placement. Eyes should protrude to the correct extent and be looking in the same direction. The base, or "butt," of deer ears should fit tightly around the mold. Ears should be thin and not lean too far forward.

Tanning skins. Taxidermy associations consider the use of dry preservative, which removes moisture from a skin, an inadequate substitute for tanning. Leaders tan their own skins or send them to a tannery.

Artistic detail. Work should be be lifelike, even if it is a complete reproduction. Expect quality eyes and good detail work around the eyes. Paints on fish mounts ought to blend, as do the colors of a fish's skin.

Taxidermy associations

Florida State Taxidermists Association

President: Shawn Logan

6052 Flintlock Loop

Tallahassee, FL 32311

(850) 245-6884 National Taxidermists Association

President: Mark Wilson

NTA Headquarters 108 Branch Drive

Slidell, LA 70461

1-866-662-9054 headquarters@nationaltaxidermists.com

International Guild of Taxidermists

President: Joe Boggs

411 George St.

Aurora, IN 47001

812 926-4868 joeboggs@artistictaxidermy.com For an overview of trade associations, conventions, training videos and forums, go online to www.taxidermy.net

[Last modified May 19, 2005, 08:41:13]