Preserving a deer’s skull in a European-style mount is a comparatively inexpensive option that captures a natural beauty. It’s one a pro can do, and alternately it’s one you can do for yourself.
The result is a mount that offers a stark visual contrast and an earthy, natural style whose results appeal to many people just as much or more than those from any other method of preservation.
A person who shoots a whitetail buck today should expect to pay a quality taxidermist $650 to upwards of $1,000 for a shoulder mount – the style that preserves the look of a live deer with hide, hair and all replicated or intact. The same taxidermist would likely charge roughly $150 to $250 to do a European, or skull, mount of the same deer, because there is still time, skill and investment involved, though far less in each case than the shoulder mount. The Euro mount is also an option anyone with a few key pieces of outdoor cooking equipment and the time to do it can make for themselves, an additional cost savings and a furtherance of the memories being made.
Personally, I prefer the look of a Euro to the look of a shoulder mount in all deer and elk cases. I will, and have, gladly made Euros of the largest deer and elk I ever expect to shoot, and I truly prefer it that way. If both preparations were the same price, I would still pick the Euro. This may be the only example in my life of a time when the best price and personal preferences align.
In a nutshell, the steps required for making a Euro mount are brief. Needed equipment includes two or three bottles of high-test peroxide, the sort sold at a beauty supply store, a tablespoon of Dawn dishwashing detergent, a plastic bristle brush, a wire coat hanger or other bit of stiff wire, a boiling pot large enough to contain the skull, and something to heat the pot on. You want something to rest the antlers on that lets you rest the skull in the pot without wetting the antlers. A couple pieces of scrap lumber, a few random cooking utensils or something else that bridges the mouth of the pot will be fine. A pressure washer is very nice to have for the cleaning step, but it’s not mandatory.
The steps are as follows:
• Skin thoroughly, then cut away every remaining bit of meat that can possibly be cut away.
• Boil the skull (but not the antlers) outdoors in a pot of plain water for several hours, cooking all remaining attached meat free. Some tendons will remain stuck to bone until physically brushed or blown out.
• Let the skull cool, then clean with a pressure washer or a plastic bristle brush. Don’t use any tool abrasive enough to mark the visible bone. Use the curly end of a straightened coat hanger to work on the inside of the skull.
• Repeat the previous step with new, clean water, this time adding a couple drops of Dawn dishwashing liquid to the boiling pot. This will lift off the oils that have cooked into things. One repetition of this may be enough, or you may take two. Continue until the skull is 100% clean to the bone, inside and out. When this step is done, the bone will be a dull brown color, roughly the hue of pork rib bones with the meat off. It will be a dull color but it will be perfectly clean. You can actually stop at this point if you want.
The whitening step is easy but delicate by comparison. It’s really unlikely you’d ever overcook the skull in the plain-water and Dawn-water boiling steps, but it’s quite possible to overdo the whitening step if you walk away while it’s boiling.
• Carefully wrap the antler bases until waterproof, then boil skull in water that includes peroxide. There’s no absolute pat formula for this mixture, no strength-and-volume-of-peroxide-to-water ratio, that I’ve ever been able to find. You’ll want to be using high-test peroxide as would be used by a professional hair dresser, bought from a beauty supply store. A quart or two or three of this into a multi-gallon pot of new, clean water is how much I use. Bring the water, with the skull in it, up to a boil and check its whiteness frequently. This whole whitening step may only take a few minutes. You’ll be able to see it getting whiter. You may not even reach a full, rolling boil. Stop when you reach your desired level of whiteness, realizing you’re making it whiter by removing bone and so must quit before you boil it to dust. As soon as the skull is as white as you want it, take it out of the boiling pot and rinse it in cool water to stop the process and get the peroxide off the bone. Take your time here and get all the peroxide off. Go carefully and make sure to rinse it all over, inside and out. The physical reaction will continue if you don’t.
This step can be touched up in a couple ways if you need to. The whitening step is cumulative, so you can always set up the boiler, water and peroxide again later and whiten it a little more. When the skull is completely dry, remove whatever you’d used to waterproof the antler bases. If peroxide water got in under bits of this and whitened parts of the antler to a point that you’d want to fix it, there are Sharpie or paint pen-style wood finish detail markers available anywhere that sells paint and stain. A medium brown one of these and a few delicate touches to the antler spots will fix it up, when applied conservatively and carefully.
If you’ll want to hang the mount you’ve made, there’s a built-in hole at the back of the skull where the spinal cord was. You can attach a toggle bolt inside this or make other similar arrangements that will let you loop a hook in the skull onto a hanger you attach to the wall. Alternately, www.skullhooker.com offers an option that attaches to a wall or sits on a table, then holds the skull through this hole in a way that lets you position the skull for display.
This is a great project and enjoyable to do if you have time to do it right. A rainy Saturday with nothing else going on is perfect.
Skinning the skull out does take some effort. During it, you will appreciate why taxidermists charge at least $100 or more of their total fee. Holding the skull while you pull against it is the challenging part. I like to do it on the tailgate of a pickup truck, using a short bit of rope tied in a circle, looping one end over an antler and the other over anything that works in the gate area of the truck. Once the skinning is complete, the hard work is done, though. The rest just involves patience.
For the cooking pot, any large pot used for canning jars might work. Otherwise, get the biggest cheap pot that will do the job at any discount store.
You’ll want to keep the base of the antlers just above the surface of the water, so a couple boards to rest the antlers on should work. Rig this up and sort it out while you’re filling the pot with cool water for the first time. When you get to the whitening step particularly, you’ll need to keep the antler bone above the water’s surface.
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You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 35 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
