Granted most of us don’t go out in search of just the trophy. That, we think as sportsmen and women is probably reserved for the wealthier clientele who don’t avail themselves of the meat and may in fact not even use it.
Still, many of us after taking our first bear, or our first big game animal, tend to want to preserve those memories by preserving the animal in some form, whether its a head mount or an entire animal.
Taking extra care of the taxidermist that you use, checking him or her out quite thoroughly might be in order, as my own experience taught me a few years back.
Anyone who has ever hunted the Pennsylvania hills in the snow, hiked for several miles, and then found their quarry, drug it out of the woods and thick underbrush in the snow can tell you that bear hunting in Pennsylvania takes some real effort. And since it was my first bear, I was, and rightly so, quite impressed with it, even though it wasn’t a large animal by any stretch of the imagination, probably weighing in at about 240.
Still for all intents and purposes it was great, I was proud, and took it to the newpaper to have photos taken and published. (Small town newspapers find first kills and so on quite impressive and ours puts photos in the paper since its quite a hunting community there)
My reward for the newspapers article was multiple phone calls from sporting folks who congratulated me, along with one phone call from a taxidermist, offering to do my mount at a cut rate since it was my first bear. Needless to say, at the price of things, I was quite impressed, had never had an animal mounted before now and didn’t know much about the scams that can take place in the business, so I happily said yes and delivered the bear the next morning.
Three weeks later, when I phoned to ask about the progress of the animal, I was told that it would certainly take a bit more time. Not knowing a lot about the business I bought into it quite nicely and was promised a phone call a week later to update me. When that call didn’t materialize, I was of course on the phone, quite excited and anticipating what I would need to pay the man, which was in fact all the conversation this time entailed. There was no update on the bear, which I did find odd, but didn’t question.
Suffice it to say, at the end of about three months, (thankfully no money had changed hands yet) I phoned again, asking for a progress report and received the response “your bear was lost”..
Now I’m no expert in taxidermy, as I’ve said, but I found it quite unusual that in a small shop, with only three freezers and work tables, that you could lose something the size of a bear. His comments never went further than that, nor was I ever given any kind of explanation, but later, an aquaintance of this gentleman told me that he had not been able to pay his power bill and the freezer and coolers he used had of course gone down, resulting in the loss of every animal that he had in his shop to attend to.
While that wasn’t exactly “misplaced” lost, it certainly was lost and unusable. Suffice it to say it taught me a great deal. When you take your first animal, check out the taxidermist as well as you would a babysitter for your kids. Find out who else they’ve worked for. Get references and then.. CALL THEM. Make sure that they’ve been happy with their work, that the work was done in a timely way and that they paid a reasonable price.
Don’t waste your time, and your trophy on someone who isn’t going to get it right, and above all, who isn’t going to be honest with you and stand behind their work to build a reputation for themselves. Had I done so, I’d have found that this man was perpetually late with the work he did, and that in some cases, his customers were not happy with it.
Lesson learned.
