Wednesday, Apr. 23, 2008

Taxidermy is never out of season

Proud hunters make sure trophy 'mounters' stay busy

CERES — If you only learn one thing about taxidermy, learn this: Animals aren't stuffed, they're mounted.

"Stuffed" comes from the 1800s, when game animals were stuffed with rags. "Mounted" comes from the 1900s, when naturalists and artists fused dissection, tanning, carpentry, casting, molding, woodwork, leatherwork, sculptor and painting into a modern craft.

Steve Burke has mounted trophies for area hunters at the Sportsmen's Den in Ceres for almost 20 years.

The mounts on display in his studio change as customers pick them up, but earlier this month, a 300-pound black bear stood guard near the door. On the wall was a smallmouth bass arching toward some reeds, a black bass hiding under a lily pad, two fat flushing mallards and the biggest pintail Burke has seen — he needed to use a large mallard body to fill out the skin (more on that later).

Across the studio, a wild boar head and full coyote looked at the bench where Burke works, next to a pheasant under a "Posted: No hunting" sign. A 5-by-5 bull elk, shot in Colorado by Lt. Brent Smith of the Ceres Police Department, stood in the middle of the room.

"I grew up in a hunting family. It was a time when I spent a lot of time with my family and now my friends," Smith said. "It's a lot of good memories."

Whatever the mount, it starts in Burke's freezer. Burke's mother-in-law used to say he had the only freezer in town where the meat stared back. Now, the studio is lined with commercial freezers, though he still washes dead birds in the kitchen sink and runs them through the family washing machine.

Hunters are funny about their prey. Whether bird or boar, elk or eland, it always looked bigger in the field. Some chase trophies: the biggest bass, widest rack or most points. Others want to commemorate time with friends and family. Still others, like me, want a reason to tell visitors about that perfect shot.

My canvasback showed up midway through my fourth duck hunt in January. I was sitting in the Vierra family blind at Featherstone Duck Club outside Gustine. We were close to limiting on green-wing teal when a big drake canvasback cruised by my far left, 45 yards out. Learning to use a shotgun can be frustrating, but when this can caught my eye, for the first time in my first season of hunting, it all came together. One shot, crack, and the bird wadded up. It splashed in 4 feet of cold water.

"You better start leading them a little bit better," Burke said four months later, my canvasback splayed on his workbench. "You did a number on this foot."

The right foot was a little mangled, but the pattern was good. One pellet shattered the right wing, and a few others cut through the breast — stoning the bird dead in flight.

Burke spread the webbing in his hand. He pulled the bill and shook the carcass.

"People do it different ways," he said. "Basically, we're going to turn this thing inside out. We're going to get all the meat out of him, all the fat, clean him up, tan the skin, then we're going to put him back together."

No blood, no guts

"Taxidermy," from the ancient Greek words for movement and skin, roughly translates to "the movement of skin," but the real work doesn't start until the skin is off.

A scalpel is run from the nape of the neck, down the belly, to the vent, just deep enough to break the skin. There's no blood and guts. Bones are sawed; neck meat is cut high near the skull, and the organs and meat come out in one package. Borax is liberally sprinkled over the first incision and into the bird. Some taxidermists use corn cob; some don't use anything.