WEBVTT - How Taxidermy Works 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:02.800 Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:07.480 It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know 0:00:08.080 --> 0:00:16.400 from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:20.080 the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant 0:00:20.120 --> 0:00:22.640 that would make this, that would make this stuff you 0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:27.200 should know? Hello, Hey, Chuck, h Hey, what's going on? 0:00:27.720 --> 0:00:30.600 You know? You know I tossed in turn last night. 0:00:30.640 --> 0:00:32.760 I'm like, I have to come up with a good 0:00:32.800 --> 0:00:35.920 intro for this. I kept waking up in the middle 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:39.599 and I had cold sweats and I got nothing. Ever, 0:00:41.159 --> 0:00:45.959 everybody sweats. Uh yeah, nice, Thanks Chuck. Um, you want 0:00:45.960 --> 0:00:47.720 to know what I came up with. I think it 0:00:47.760 --> 0:00:52.800 would be appropriate, Chuck, is your favorite use of Texader 0:00:52.880 --> 0:00:57.200 me in a movie? That's what I got. I'm gonna 0:00:57.200 --> 0:00:59.880 go with Psycho Psycho. Yeah, that's the one I mentioned 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:02.840 article because you know Norman Bates had that creepy office 0:01:02.880 --> 0:01:07.240 full of foul and beast mounted beast. Yeah, you know, 0:01:07.480 --> 0:01:09.400 we're talking about Texas mmy and I think one of 0:01:09.400 --> 0:01:12.560 the themes that will keep coming up is that depending 0:01:12.600 --> 0:01:17.040 on how you pose an animal, it can either be 0:01:17.160 --> 0:01:20.440 very cute or very menacing, and if you fill an 0:01:20.440 --> 0:01:23.480 office as Norman Bates did with a bunch of menacing 0:01:23.560 --> 0:01:28.040 looking stuff, dead animals, it's gonna be creepy. It's curtains 0:01:28.080 --> 0:01:32.320 for you. Yeah, it is shower curtains. That's awful. This 0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:36.240 is a listener request, and uh it's a Chuck Bryant article. 0:01:36.760 --> 0:01:40.640 So I'm just gonna kick back and go yeah, right, yeah, 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:43.600 but thank you Scott and Los Angeles, who was inspired 0:01:44.319 --> 0:01:47.240 by this query when he visited the Bass Pro Shop 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:50.880 in Rancho Cucamonga and he was a little taken aback 0:01:50.960 --> 0:01:54.440 by all the stuffed and mounted I'm sorry, mounted animals. Yeah, 0:01:54.520 --> 0:01:57.840 and you're welcome. Best pro shops for that free plug, Yeah, 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:00.440 we have one here, you know. I've I'm going I'm 0:02:00.480 --> 0:02:05.280 hoping they'll send us some free poles or something. So, Chuck, 0:02:05.320 --> 0:02:07.480 when you wrote this article, did you know much about 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:10.200 text jermy already or was it just pretty much relegated 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:15.400 to psycho Psycho although my dad is a is an enthusiast, 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:18.880 Holy cow, I can't believe this. I do have a 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:22.120 great intro. Okay, let's hear it. I totally forgot all right, 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:24.480 let's try it again. In so like, now, I think 0:02:24.480 --> 0:02:26.520 we should keep the first one. Yeah, let's do both. 0:02:26.800 --> 0:02:29.520 The about Oh, I don't know. Three or four months ago, 0:02:29.800 --> 0:02:31.560 you and I were coming home and she went around 0:02:31.600 --> 0:02:33.120 the front to get the mail, and I was coming 0:02:33.120 --> 0:02:36.360 in the back, and um, as I was unlocking the 0:02:36.400 --> 0:02:39.320 back door, her baby baby no, and I stopped and 0:02:39.360 --> 0:02:42.880 she thought somebody had broken in because the window was broken. 0:02:43.080 --> 0:02:47.079 Front window. So we go and investigate. Right, there is 0:02:47.160 --> 0:02:50.960 a huge hawk. I actually measured it from tail to head. 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:54.000 It was fifteen inches. You're kidding, an enormous hawk. Dead 0:02:54.120 --> 0:02:56.920 is a doornail that is disco Right. How did this 0:02:57.000 --> 0:02:58.880 not come to you when you were thinking of an interest. 0:02:58.919 --> 0:03:00.919 I don't know. I mean, this is crazy. That's weird. 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:03.920 So um, it was beautiful. Its neck was broken, but 0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:06.680 that was it. It was still warm, It was clearly 0:03:06.720 --> 0:03:09.520 in good shape, you know, well, aside from being dead, 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:12.680 and um, we're Our first thought was we need to 0:03:12.720 --> 0:03:15.040 stuff this. This is this hawk came to us, gave 0:03:15.080 --> 0:03:17.920 its life so it could sit in our study. And 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:20.520 um we looked into it and found that we would 0:03:20.520 --> 0:03:23.800 have been arrested had we tried to. Yeah. Apparently in 0:03:23.800 --> 0:03:26.639 Georgia hawks are protected and We definitely had a hawk. 0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:28.680 It was a chicken hawk, you know, like the little 0:03:28.720 --> 0:03:30.760 chicken hawk and the fog horn leghorn thing. You're a 0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:33.160 chicken hawk and I'm a chicken right exactly, except this one. 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:37.280 Actually it could have taken a chicken pretty easy. Um, 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:41.720 but apparently they're protected and it'll raise a whole can 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:44.480 of worms if you try to get these things stuffed. Interesting, 0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:48.040 which actually goes into a point that you make in 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:51.240 this article that if you have a hawk or a 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:54.920 deer or a beaver or any combination of those, uh, 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:57.200 and you take them to a text enrvous and you 0:03:57.320 --> 0:04:01.680 expect some, as you put it, uh, hill billy mad scientists, 0:04:01.680 --> 0:04:04.760 but the thirst for blood, you're going to be disappointed 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:11.440 because most of them are very gentle kind, loving, crotchety artists. Yes, right, yes, 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:14.600 for sure. Let's talk about taxidermy. Where did it come from? Now? 0:04:14.680 --> 0:04:18.600 See man, what a great intro. Thank you. Uh. Taxidermy 0:04:18.680 --> 0:04:23.599 Josh began as uh out of practicality in England because 0:04:23.680 --> 0:04:27.800 of the need for leather, usable leather, So tanning hides 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:30.799 was where it all started. Yeah, I'll tan your hide. 0:04:32.040 --> 0:04:35.760 Did you ever get told that? No, My parents were educated. Yeah, 0:04:36.160 --> 0:04:38.080 I think my grandmother might have said that. I should 0:04:38.080 --> 0:04:39.640 have said, look, do you want to make my button 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:46.720 to useable leather? She would have smacked me, she would have. So, uh, 0:04:46.880 --> 0:04:48.440 it was kind of borne out of that. And then 0:04:48.520 --> 0:04:52.480 also once the naturalist like James Cook and Darwin started 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:56.239 collecting odd animals, they worked some of the early most 0:04:56.480 --> 0:05:00.040 the earliest taxidermists. Because if you're you know, Darwin, and 0:05:00.080 --> 0:05:02.279 then you're like, look this new species of turtle I 0:05:02.279 --> 0:05:07.520 found and killed, it's like six months ago, and yeah, 0:05:07.560 --> 0:05:10.320 it's not gonna work. So yeah, you said that for 0:05:10.760 --> 0:05:15.640 they they started it for leather, Yeah, and to preserve specimens, right, yeah, 0:05:15.839 --> 0:05:20.600 which makes sense. So okay, so Texas Jeremy has legitimate origins, 0:05:21.839 --> 0:05:24.760 and uh, they were it was a little crude back 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:28.000 in those days. They literally like gutted and removed the 0:05:28.080 --> 0:05:31.320 organs and stuffed it with like straw. But it didn't 0:05:31.360 --> 0:05:33.760 work too well because they didn't preserve the animal and 0:05:33.800 --> 0:05:36.840 like the eyes and the nose and the teeth would 0:05:36.880 --> 0:05:38.560 rot of course, so it would be like like this 0:05:38.640 --> 0:05:41.919 turtle and people be like you exactly, I don't know 0:05:41.960 --> 0:05:45.159 what a turtle is, but I don't like it. Uh so, yeah, 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:48.479 that's how it started. Nice and it's kind of stayed well, 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:53.000 it's stayed the same from what is that the nineteenth centuries? Yeah, 0:05:53.560 --> 0:06:00.120 James Cook, he was eighteenth century, right, Um, it's they 0:06:00.240 --> 0:06:03.440 pretty much the same. I mean as far as what 0:06:03.520 --> 0:06:08.040 they would do to the specimen, they would stuff it. Yeah, 0:06:08.120 --> 0:06:11.200 the process right, Um, it became a little more refined 0:06:11.560 --> 0:06:13.680 as they figured out how they you know, I got 0:06:13.680 --> 0:06:15.800 to preserve the tongue somehow, Charles get rid of it 0:06:15.839 --> 0:06:17.919 all together. Yeah, that's what I would have done. Yeah, 0:06:18.080 --> 0:06:20.120 you can. You know, with the advent of plastics, that's 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:24.760 what plastic was really created for plastics and rubber tongue removal, well, 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:28.520 to create substitute tongues for taxidermy. Interesting little known fact 0:06:28.560 --> 0:06:31.400 that I just made it is true, Okay, got me 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:34.680 I feel like a sucker. Uh yeah, dude. It's stayed 0:06:34.680 --> 0:06:36.880 the same till the nineteen seventies, which is kind of 0:06:36.880 --> 0:06:41.000 a long time. And then uh, they began using they 0:06:41.080 --> 0:06:45.000 quit stuffing basically and started using molds. The taxidermy revolution 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:48.359 as it's called, Yes, the Great taxidermy Revolution of the seventies, 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:51.160 I think Andrix wrote about that. So that's why they 0:06:51.200 --> 0:06:53.280 actually if you you don't say stuffed anymore and you 0:06:53.320 --> 0:06:56.120 say mounted, right, because they don't stuff them. They use 0:06:56.200 --> 0:06:58.680 what you say, a polyurethane mold generally, yeah, a lot 0:06:58.720 --> 0:07:01.160 of times it's a foam carved mold, which actually that 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:06.479 brings up a good point. Taxidermists are artists. They are sculptors, 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:09.400 they are craftsmen, they are carpenters. It's a mix of 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:13.160 a lot of different disciplines. Artistic discipline so or industrial arts. 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:18.440 You could say yes, sure, absolutely and chuck, Actually it's 0:07:18.480 --> 0:07:21.440 a um, I don't know if it's a dying art. 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:24.040 I don't get the impression from the article, but it 0:07:24.080 --> 0:07:27.560 seems like the taxidermists are few and far between, especially 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:30.720 really skilled ones. Yeah, it's not the most common. It's 0:07:30.760 --> 0:07:33.560 not like a Starbucks. Let's say, you don't see a 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:37.240 taxidermy shop on every corner. And I also got the 0:07:37.240 --> 0:07:39.920 impressionel that you're kind enough to not say this explicitly, 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:43.560 that texidermy exists in sort of a graduated level. So 0:07:43.880 --> 0:07:46.520 you've got you know, you're the guy who started out 0:07:46.560 --> 0:07:49.120 as a hobbyist maybe who's starting to make money on 0:07:49.160 --> 0:07:53.920 the side, um doing taxidermy. For local hunters or fishermen, 0:07:54.400 --> 0:07:55.760 and then you go all the way up to the 0:07:55.800 --> 0:07:58.680 people who are just at the peak of their craft 0:07:58.720 --> 0:08:01.000 and they're working for like natural history museums in the 0:08:01.040 --> 0:08:03.800 Ottumn Society and all that, right, Yeah, exactly. And that's 0:08:03.800 --> 0:08:05.440 a good point too, because a lot of the a 0:08:05.480 --> 0:08:10.160 lot of taxidermists are our big time animal lovers, and 0:08:10.200 --> 0:08:12.760 they some of them don't even work with hunted animals, 0:08:13.040 --> 0:08:15.600 so they'll they'll do like roadkill or like you said, 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:19.120 work for like Fernbank Science Center because they need their 0:08:19.720 --> 0:08:22.960 you know, Red Fox, not the comedian. That'd be kind 0:08:22.960 --> 0:08:27.240 of cool, though. Is he what museum is he in? Uh? 0:08:27.320 --> 0:08:30.000 He's in the Museum of Dirty Old Man. Yeah, that's good. 0:08:30.040 --> 0:08:32.000 If my mom would never let me watch Sanford and 0:08:32.040 --> 0:08:34.640 Son because she thought Red Fox is a dirty old man. Well, 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:37.520 his stand up was very dirty. Yeah, Sanford and Son 0:08:37.559 --> 0:08:39.800 wasn't very dirty, of course. It's mainly just him faking 0:08:39.840 --> 0:08:46.680 heart attacks. Wheezy. Uh So, where are we, Elizabeth? Elizabeth, 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:48.280 I'm coming to join you. You're right. Where did I 0:08:48.280 --> 0:08:55.240 get wheezy? Okay? God, it's awful. Uh So where are we? 0:08:55.240 --> 0:08:57.240 We are all over the match? Uck? We are you 0:08:57.280 --> 0:08:59.520 said it's it's slow process. That's true, and that's for 0:09:00.280 --> 0:09:03.480 a couple of reasons. Um, mainly, like you said, because 0:09:03.480 --> 0:09:05.160 there's not a lot of taxidermists. So it's not like 0:09:05.200 --> 0:09:08.760 it takes a year to necessarily mount your red fox, 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:11.080 but it's going to take a year for you to 0:09:11.120 --> 0:09:13.640 get it. Probably, Yeah, sometimes because they have a you know, 0:09:13.720 --> 0:09:16.480 a freezer full of dead animals. And then another reason 0:09:16.600 --> 0:09:19.480 is because a lot of these guys, especially I imagine 0:09:19.480 --> 0:09:23.800 with deer and other larger animals, Um, they send the 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:28.160 skin off to be commercially tanned, right, yeah, but just 0:09:28.200 --> 0:09:30.120 because it takes up a lot of space and imagine 0:09:30.200 --> 0:09:32.400 that in and of itself as a whole other art 0:09:32.480 --> 0:09:35.000 and science. Oh yeah, definitely right. Yeah. We won't get 0:09:35.000 --> 0:09:36.680 into tanning a whole lot because I don't know whole 0:09:36.679 --> 0:09:39.280 lot about it, to be honest, I don't either. We 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:41.640 could do that for a podcast. We could. That's coming up, 0:09:41.760 --> 0:09:45.840 Tested and Report two tanning. Uh, we should talk about 0:09:45.880 --> 0:09:47.680 cost a little bit before we get into the nuts 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:50.320 and bolts of the process. If you want a bear 0:09:50.320 --> 0:09:53.240 skin rug, let's say, if you've shot a bear and 0:09:53.320 --> 0:09:55.600 you're a bad person and shot a bear. Uh, you 0:09:55.600 --> 0:09:57.480 can have a bear skin rug for about a grand, 0:09:58.120 --> 0:10:00.959 which is not bad. No, have you ever laid naked 0:10:00.960 --> 0:10:03.720 on bear skin? It's worth a grand? Uh my dad 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:05.840 has a bear skin rock, so I imagine you have 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:08.840 laid naked unbers and now I haven't. Actually I tried 0:10:08.880 --> 0:10:12.000 to walk around it as much as possible. Uh. If 0:10:12.000 --> 0:10:15.240 you want that bear standing up, and I would guess 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:19.920 in a pose like uh kind of butcher, you sure? 0:10:20.480 --> 0:10:23.880 That'd be about two grand, which I found surprising. I mean, 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:25.920 going from bear skin rug for a grand, which seems 0:10:25.920 --> 0:10:30.360 reasonable to me, to a full bear standing menacingly for 0:10:30.679 --> 0:10:33.240 just an extra grand. I think that's worth saving up for, 0:10:33.400 --> 0:10:35.120 don't you. Yeah, it takes up a lot more room, 0:10:35.160 --> 0:10:37.640 though well not necessarily. I mean, if you have high ceilings, 0:10:37.640 --> 0:10:41.040 you're set. It's true in an empty corner. Yeah. Uh. 0:10:41.080 --> 0:10:44.120 Then these are ballparked figures. So if you're a taxidermist 0:10:44.200 --> 0:10:46.160 or an enthusiast and you say, no, actually that would 0:10:46.200 --> 0:10:49.319 cost this were we did our best here with the numbers. 0:10:49.720 --> 0:10:52.280 Chuck did as best here with the numbers, and bravo, Chuck. 0:10:52.520 --> 0:10:55.240 The thing that surprised me. Everything else sounded pretty uh, 0:10:55.400 --> 0:10:58.199 pretty standard, like a mounted deer from what shoulders and 0:10:58.280 --> 0:11:03.160 antlers is about five to sift um. The thing that 0:11:03.200 --> 0:11:06.760 surprised me was that a fish costs about eighteen bucks 0:11:06.840 --> 0:11:09.880 an inch. They sounded like in this article the hardest 0:11:09.880 --> 0:11:15.600 thing to mount. Yeah, it is, but it's also small, Okay, 0:11:15.760 --> 0:11:17.360 so I don't think it takes quite as much time 0:11:17.400 --> 0:11:21.120 even though it is artistically harder. I think it sounds like, yeah, 0:11:21.280 --> 0:11:25.440 let's get into this. Why chuck our fish so hard 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:28.679 to mount? Well, one reason, my friend, is that a 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:31.840 fish loses its color as it dries out. So the 0:11:31.880 --> 0:11:34.360 whole thing, it's not like you know, when they wrap 0:11:34.360 --> 0:11:37.920 a deer carcass I'm sorry, a dear skin around the mold. 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:40.760 That's pretty much it. But you have to literally paint 0:11:41.120 --> 0:11:43.760 the fish all those little skills by scale, right, a 0:11:43.760 --> 0:11:45.760 lot of scales. Yeah, that's a lot of skills. It's 0:11:45.760 --> 0:11:48.000 a lot of time and work for eighteen bucks an inch. 0:11:48.520 --> 0:11:51.080 Don't think so. Yeah, I would think they cost like 0:11:51.160 --> 0:11:55.280 standing bear type prices, you know. And there's different processes 0:11:55.280 --> 0:11:58.160 depending on the kind of fish, right, warm water fish 0:11:58.240 --> 0:12:01.560 like bass is going to be largely what you bring 0:12:01.640 --> 0:12:05.360 in as far as you know, the reality of it, 0:12:05.400 --> 0:12:08.840 goes right, Like the bass you bring in and then 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:10.679 the bats you get mounted are going to be pretty 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:13.960 much the same thing. But with the saltwater fish, these 0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:16.600 things are basically the texidermist takes a photo of the 0:12:16.640 --> 0:12:20.520 fish you brought in and then completely remakes it out 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:24.280 of synthetic materials, so the fish you brought in is 0:12:24.480 --> 0:12:27.160 no longer with us. Yeah, Like if you see you know, 0:12:27.240 --> 0:12:30.400 the marlin and T. G. I. Friday's on the wall, 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:34.480 that's almost a chance that that's not a real marlin 0:12:34.559 --> 0:12:36.439 at all. Right, And the cool thing about this is 0:12:36.520 --> 0:12:39.160 since it's all the same anyway, like you're not actually 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:41.000 going to get the fish you catch, You're going to 0:12:41.080 --> 0:12:46.080 basically get a life size replica of it. Um. This 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:50.120 is really popular among catch and released sport fishermen, right, 0:12:50.240 --> 0:12:52.400 or guys who want to eat their fish. Sure, I 0:12:52.440 --> 0:12:55.200 didn't mention that, but and why wouldn't you Why wouldn't 0:12:55.200 --> 0:12:56.960 you eat a marlin that you caught with your bare 0:12:57.000 --> 0:13:01.480 hand through noodling? You know? Oh man? Could you imagine? Uh? So, 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:03.640 should we talk a little bit about the fish process? 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:07.440 What you do if you if you've got the skin 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:09.199 mount is what it's called, which is what you do 0:13:09.280 --> 0:13:13.480 with the bass, you um remove the inside of the fish, 0:13:13.520 --> 0:13:16.400 all all the meat and bones that you can and 0:13:16.600 --> 0:13:19.520 except for the head that you can not get certain 0:13:19.520 --> 0:13:21.400 meat out of the head and tail area. You don't 0:13:21.400 --> 0:13:23.600 want to eat meat head or head meat head meat 0:13:24.040 --> 0:13:27.480 and uh. What you do then as you inject um 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:32.920 like borax and salt preservatives into the meat that you 0:13:32.960 --> 0:13:36.080 can't get out to keep it from spoiling. And uh 0:13:36.400 --> 0:13:39.880 again with the I think cold water fish. Yeah, the 0:13:39.920 --> 0:13:42.719 cold water fish, the skin will actually be the same 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:46.360 that you brought in, right, But they're going they can't 0:13:46.400 --> 0:13:48.360 stuff it. It's not possible for them to stuff it, 0:13:48.400 --> 0:13:50.280 like they could have warm water fish like with maybe 0:13:50.280 --> 0:13:55.000 hard pack sawdust. Yeah, cold water fish. Um like salmon, sure, 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:58.559 uh they they it's so thin that you'll be able 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:00.680 to see the sawdust, right, Like, why does your salmon 0:14:00.720 --> 0:14:02.880 have sawdust in it? And I would say, well, because 0:14:02.880 --> 0:14:09.359 it's mounted. Uh my impression is too with the the sawdust. 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:11.640 I might be wrong here, but is that you You 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:14.480 might use sawdust if it's just the straight fish on 0:14:14.520 --> 0:14:17.320 a plaque. But if you want to show your bass 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:21.320 with the curved tail leaping from the water in mid fight, 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:23.760 then that's when you're gonna have to make the poly 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:27.960 your thing mold and you know, carved into whatever shape 0:14:28.000 --> 0:14:30.760 that you want. And those molds in and of themselves 0:14:30.760 --> 0:14:34.600 are a work of art, especially with deer. Oh yeah right, sure. 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:37.200 So like if you if you actually pulled the skin 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:42.880 off of a stuffed deer, you're gonna find intricately carved muscles, bone, 0:14:42.960 --> 0:14:47.120 mass veins. Yeah. Uh that's pretty serious stuff, right, Yeah, 0:14:47.160 --> 0:14:50.200 that's like big time sculpting. Yeah. And uh so did 0:14:50.200 --> 0:14:52.480 you like that transition to deer? I did? Are we 0:14:52.520 --> 0:14:54.760 done with fish? We're done with fish? I think, well 0:14:54.800 --> 0:14:56.480 we should just say they also have to salt the 0:14:56.800 --> 0:14:59.840 fish skin on the inside because if it dries out 0:14:59.880 --> 0:15:02.800 to quick, it'll shrink, which you don't want. And you, 0:15:02.920 --> 0:15:04.800 like we said earlier, you need to paint the fish 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:08.640 at the end, pop out the eyeballs because they will rot, 0:15:08.800 --> 0:15:11.560 and insert your little glass eyeballs that you stick in 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:14.120 with a little pin on the back. Well, that's the 0:15:14.160 --> 0:15:16.680 real common theme of this podcast is the last step 0:15:16.760 --> 0:15:19.360 is taking out the eyeballs and putting in fake ones, right, 0:15:19.720 --> 0:15:22.520 and just about every single one of these pretty much. Yeah, 0:15:22.800 --> 0:15:27.120 same with deer. Yeah, that was much worse transition. So 0:15:27.240 --> 0:15:29.120 we're we're at the deer. And I should say too, 0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:32.280 this is a broad overview. They write like volumes of 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:35.080 books on how to do deer taxidermy, so we're not 0:15:35.120 --> 0:15:37.520 gonna like sum that up in four and a half minutes. 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:40.920 The one thing that you're you're gonna find in every 0:15:40.960 --> 0:15:43.360 taxidermy book on stuffing deer is the first thing you 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:45.720 have to do is skin it. Yes, you want to 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:48.440 skin that deer. And what you have after you skin 0:15:48.560 --> 0:15:51.720 the deer is a cape. That's what it's called, right Domistically, 0:15:52.280 --> 0:15:54.360 look at my dear cap. I do won'der? How many 0:15:54.400 --> 0:15:57.800 taxidermists have that joke? I bet a lot of them do, yes, Josh. 0:15:57.800 --> 0:16:00.280 And the goal here when you're skinning the deer, or 0:16:00.360 --> 0:16:03.080 if you're a taxidermist, you want to make as few 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:06.520 cuts as possible. What that still allow you to get 0:16:06.600 --> 0:16:11.960 the organs and the carcass and everything out, Because if 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:14.240 if if you're let's say, you can't get your deer 0:16:14.240 --> 0:16:16.200 to the taxi dermists in a few days, you have 0:16:16.240 --> 0:16:17.960 to do it yourself as a hunter. And if you're 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:19.880 not very good at it and you make too many 0:16:19.920 --> 0:16:21.680 cuts and you mangle the deer, then you're gonna make 0:16:21.680 --> 0:16:24.680 it really hard for the taxidermists. Right. The more incisions 0:16:24.680 --> 0:16:27.080 you have, the more sewing the taxidermist has to do, 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:30.160 and the angrier the taxidermists is going to be. Right, 0:16:30.240 --> 0:16:33.080 And like you said, they're crotchety. So salt comes into 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:36.760 play here too. Um. I guess they use salt to 0:16:36.800 --> 0:16:38.920 preserve just about everything, right, And like you said, it's 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:42.680 not table salt, it's like borax. Yeah. Um, So they 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:46.080 use salt to preserve the areas around, like the mucous 0:16:46.120 --> 0:16:49.160 membranes that they can't really cut out without making the 0:16:49.200 --> 0:16:52.440 deer look ghoulish. Right, And it also tightens up the 0:16:52.480 --> 0:16:54.920 skin and the hair follicles, which is a good thing 0:16:54.920 --> 0:16:58.240 because you don't want the hair to fall out. And uh, 0:16:58.160 --> 0:17:01.120 we're else around the nose and between the toes or 0:17:01.160 --> 0:17:03.640 I guess the hoofs. Yeah, so that you said toes 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:05.840 And I was like, did you have toes? I did 0:17:05.840 --> 0:17:08.280 say toes, didn't I did? I think that should probably 0:17:08.280 --> 0:17:10.040 be changed. I don't know. I think it should be 0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:16.200 like a little easter egg that only stuff you should know. Uh, 0:17:16.240 --> 0:17:19.120 so you know, once the skin dries out, you've got 0:17:19.119 --> 0:17:21.200 to prepare your mold, or while it's drying out, you're 0:17:21.440 --> 0:17:24.399 you're carving your mold, which, like we said, is very 0:17:24.520 --> 0:17:27.679 like intricate sculpting. These are true artists at work, right, 0:17:27.720 --> 0:17:29.879 And remember the skin might not even be in the 0:17:29.920 --> 0:17:32.040 same place that the texta Germots may have sent it 0:17:32.080 --> 0:17:35.240 off to a commercial tannery. So what what comes into 0:17:35.240 --> 0:17:39.160 play first and foremost is taking incredibly precise measurements, because 0:17:39.200 --> 0:17:42.240 imagine making a mold just based on measurements you took 0:17:42.720 --> 0:17:44.520 while the skin is not even there, so you can't 0:17:44.520 --> 0:17:46.760 just throw it over to to have a rough estimate 0:17:46.800 --> 0:17:48.760 of how you're doing. And as you put it, if 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:51.280 you missed the mark by a couple of inches, you're 0:17:51.280 --> 0:17:56.120 gonna have a saggy deer. Yeah, that would be no good. So, yeah, 0:17:56.160 --> 0:17:58.359 you're right. Accurate measuring is is really the first step. 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:01.960 Then they removed the skull and discard it, and discard 0:18:01.960 --> 0:18:04.440 it because you don't need the skull anymore. You remove 0:18:04.480 --> 0:18:07.440 the antlers, but you hang onto the antlers obviously because 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:11.840 you need to screw those back onto your foam head. 0:18:12.760 --> 0:18:15.880 It sounds really gross, it does, Yeah, I mean, if 0:18:15.880 --> 0:18:18.920 you really look too deeply into this. It's kind of ghastly. 0:18:19.520 --> 0:18:22.439 Yeah it is. Yeah, I wouldn't want to see it, 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:24.960 and you know, in practice, but it's fun to talk about. 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:29.120 Uh So at that point, Josh, you have let's say 0:18:29.119 --> 0:18:31.760 you've got your skin back, you've got your mold done, 0:18:32.200 --> 0:18:35.679 and you kind of um slip it on over the 0:18:35.720 --> 0:18:37.919 mold as if you would be putting on a sweatshirt. 0:18:38.600 --> 0:18:40.719 Make sure it's all nice and tight. Sew it up 0:18:40.840 --> 0:18:46.600 skin sweats It's like buffalo bill, Yeah exactly, and you 0:18:46.760 --> 0:18:51.520 pomp in. You popped in the eyes, the glass eyes, which, 0:18:51.640 --> 0:18:53.520 as we say, is usually the last thing you do. 0:18:54.000 --> 0:18:56.439 Then you um, once it's all sewed up and everything 0:18:56.480 --> 0:18:58.440 you mounted on a plaque, like you said from about 0:18:58.440 --> 0:19:01.320 the shoulder, and give it back to your customer and 0:19:01.880 --> 0:19:05.760 bing bang boom, bing bang boom, get your six fifty bucks, 0:19:05.760 --> 0:19:08.600 not bad, and go back to work on another one. 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:12.880 It's never ending, like a bird. Let's say, yeah, nice, 0:19:12.880 --> 0:19:15.199 Should we talk about foul? Foul is the left broad 0:19:15.359 --> 0:19:20.600 category of things that are generally stuffed. Sorry, mounted, don't 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:22.200 look at me like that. Right, I'll go to my 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:27.720 dad's house. You'd be surprised he's got raccoons and the 0:19:27.800 --> 0:19:32.760 bear thing hawk and flight. H he has a hawk? 0:19:32.800 --> 0:19:37.280 How does he have a hawk? Okay, yeah, he has 0:19:37.280 --> 0:19:39.280 a hawk in fight or maybe it's a falcon. See, 0:19:39.280 --> 0:19:44.040 I couldn't find any any underground taxidermist. And he's got 0:19:44.080 --> 0:19:45.760 a guy can't find those in the phone book. And 0:19:45.840 --> 0:19:49.360 he's got a bobcat. Of course, the bobcat is uh, 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:52.320 you know they are so cute, teeth bared. This one's not. 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:55.800 Does your dad hunt? Now? He just hits things with 0:19:55.840 --> 0:19:58.240 his car a lot. Now, he's an animal lover and 0:19:58.280 --> 0:20:01.240 when he will see some road kill, he would uh 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:04.320 clean up the road kill and then get the taxidermists. 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:06.359 And it's just a theme in his house. He's a 0:20:06.400 --> 0:20:09.119 he's a country guy. That's cool, yeah, Or is it 0:20:10.280 --> 0:20:12.280 all as long as he's not killing them? No, of 0:20:12.280 --> 0:20:15.920 course not. And you know he's not. Yeah, I see, 0:20:16.119 --> 0:20:17.960 there's nothing wrong with that. Now, Like we said, you 0:20:17.960 --> 0:20:19.680 got to a natural history museum, and you're not gonna 0:20:19.720 --> 0:20:22.959 say these people are awful for mounting the spot. Some 0:20:23.000 --> 0:20:26.720 people would you you forget we exist pretty close to 0:20:26.760 --> 0:20:30.360 the center and a lot of stuff. Alright, So we're 0:20:30.359 --> 0:20:32.240 at foul Josh. The first thing you do with foul 0:20:32.320 --> 0:20:34.879 like with the rest is skin. It take out all 0:20:34.880 --> 0:20:36.760 the meat and bones, but you leave the feet and 0:20:36.800 --> 0:20:40.960 talents because you don't want to recreate those. And you 0:20:41.240 --> 0:20:42.960 and then I actually saw a video and this is 0:20:43.000 --> 0:20:46.480 literally what they do. They wash and just like a 0:20:46.560 --> 0:20:50.800 tub with dishwater. They washed the feathers in the skin 0:20:51.600 --> 0:20:55.679 because it's greasy and they don't want that. No, although 0:20:55.720 --> 0:20:57.800 if it is, if it's a duck, you better be 0:20:57.880 --> 0:21:01.920 keeping that fat for cookie purposes. Yeah. Man, there's nothing 0:21:01.920 --> 0:21:06.479 better than duck fat, that's true. Um. You dry it 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:08.280 with a with a hair dryer, which will fluff up 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:12.320 the feathers again. And then you salt the remaining moisture 0:21:12.320 --> 0:21:13.960 like with everything else, because the salt will dry it 0:21:13.960 --> 0:21:17.160 out real good. You turn it inside out. You stuff 0:21:17.240 --> 0:21:21.840 the head with a non shrinking clay and so you've 0:21:21.880 --> 0:21:24.880 got a little hard headed bird now with a clay head. Uh. 0:21:24.920 --> 0:21:28.879