Preserving a deer’s skull in a European-style mount is a comparatively inexpensive option that captures a natural beauty. The result is a mount that offers a stark visual contrast and an earthy, natural style whose results appeal to many people more than those from any other method of preservation.
In a bottom line cost comparison, someone engaging a professional to mount a whitetail buck they’ve just shot should expect to pay from $650 to upwards of $1,000 for a traditional shoulder mount – the kind that preserves the appearance of a live deer with eyes, hide, hair and all. Generally, the same taxidermist may instead be engaged to do a European mount of the same deer for around $150 to $250, cleaning, preserving and carefully whitening the skull without losing the teeth or destroying the delicate bones inside the deer’s nose and upper palate. The taxidermist will then, if desired, mount the skull onto a finished wooden board that can easily be displayed on a wall anywhere a framed photo would go.
Two warnings worth noting here: First, in my direct experience, including the few items I’ve had done and the many more thousands of pieces I’ve seen, taxidermy is a service in which you should expect to get what you pay for. While paying a lot for a mount is no particular guarantee of success, bargains generally embarrass their way off their owners’ walls pretty quickly. The taxidermists I know personally all command top-shelf professional fees, and they all earn it. After the initial sting, you’ll forget about the extra $300 you spent with Sir Blue Ribbon and you’ll have something on your wall you’ll be proud of for 50 years. Or you’ll have the work of Mr. Cheap on your wall, with its collection of faulty and slapdash work, that aggravates you until you finally move it somewhere you don’t have to look at it, and the $300 you’d saved by going to him will be long-since spent elsewhere and forgotten anyway.
Second: There was a style briefly in fashion to use a faux or fake plastic skull for the Euro mount. That is not at all what I’m talking about here. Those look terrible and should never be used, as they guarantee disappointment. The faux skulls are vastly easier to prepare than natural skulls, but they look terrible. If you’re engaging someone to do the work for you, have a thorough conversation with them and make sure cleaning, whitening and preserving the natural skull is what they understand you want.
NEXT WEEK:
How to make your own European mount
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