What’s the best method for a skull mount? Our friends at Pure Instinct Hunting TV offer some fine tips, watch them create skull mounts from a couple Javalina’s below.
Skull mounts, also known as European mounts, western skull mounts, or western mounts, are skinless skull mounts. These types of displays are often referred to as European Mounts because of their popularity in Europe.
Many hunters like this approach, because we can do it ourselves, and it’s a lot cheaper than a shoulder mount at your local taxidermist. It’s also cool to do with almost any animal. Most typically, muscle and flesh is removed with a knife as best as can be done, and the entire head is submerged in a slow roiling pot of water. As some of us have learned, it is best to keep the water at a slow boil, and be patient. Sometimes running the water at too hot of a boil has been known to crack teeth. At this point, the skull can be scraped, salted, rolled up, and then tanned. Or, as in the video, a process of boiling, pressure wash, and peroxide. This gives a nice white bleached look. As noted in the video, if you are doing a deer skull and don’t want the antlers bleached, be careful not to get peroxide on them.
Beetles are becoming more & more popular. This can be done professionally, or burying your skulls for a season and letting nature do it’s things. We’ll do a post on that method sometime soon.
If you have always wanted to learn how to make your own skull mount, but didn’t know where to begin, this video will help. There’s a number of good articles on the web, including this one we found at: Outdoor Life: http://www.outdoorlife.com/blogs/hunting/2013/10/diy-taxidermy-how-make-classy-european-mount-1-day
Michael Cantrell, from Pure Instinct Hunting will walk you through the process of a DIY European mount
