Taxidermy Process for a Deer or Doe

Hello their dear reader. How are you on this fine day? Today, in this article, we will be visiting the wonderful world of doe taxidermy. How to do it and where to find them if you simply want one or two. Taxidermy is such a beautiful skilled artform, and it takes many years to perfect. However, if you are just beginning in your journey or simply have an interest in the weird world of making dead animals seemingly come back to life; we will be finding the exact steps to this process right here in this article together.

If you are looking for taxidermy and deer mounts, we actually offer them on our website. Check out our store right here if that is what you are searching for!

Without further a due, lets jump into the article and start learning how the process is done from start to finish.

What is the Form and How to Set it Up

The form for your deer is usually comprised of a Styrofoam mold for the shape of your deer that you will be mounting. Once you have your form set up and in place and ready to go, you will take a substance called hide paste and apply it to the form before slipping on the hide itself. Having the form in place and ready to go, you will then take a generous amount of hide paste onto a brush and apply it to the cheeks, neck, and shoulder area of the form. This paste will be acting as an adhesive for the hide to stay intact throughout the process and afterwards. Make sure you avoid putting the paste on the back of the form as you will be sewing the hide together in a later portion of the process. Putting the paste in this area will cause you to sew on top of the paste, and that is not good. This glue needs to cover all of the areas up under the head and neck of the mount form so the hide will be able to stick very well to the form once it has been stretched over it later.

Placing the Hide onto the Form

Being very careful as to not get any glue on the hair of the hide itself, the next step is to pull the actual hide over the form. Roll the hide skin back over itself in order to keep the hair as far away as possible from the glue and making sure you have the correct line up with the form, roll it over onto the Styrofoam form. Along the way make sure you are correcting for snugness.

You will be much better off during this step of the process if you use a hide stretching tool to help you pull the hide down over the form. This will aid you in making a nice snug fit over the whole length of the deer and will be much easier than attempting to use your hands only. Be careful in some of the thinner areas of skin as to not tear through the hide and cause a hole to form. This is possible in some of the more delicate areas of the hide such as the underarm areas of the deer skin.

Mounting the Antlers

Taking the antlers from the deer, you will place them in the correct spot-on top of the deer and secure them to the top of the form with screws of your choice. As long as the antlers are secure and there are no protrusions any size screw will do, but a 4 H exterior screw is recommended by some professional taxidermists for the perfect fit. One screw on the left side of the antler base and one the other side will be enough to keep them perfectly snug and in the correct location on the mount. It is important to notice the placement of the horns on the head of your mount. In order to check this, take two fingers and place them at the top of the eye socket of your form. If the base of your antlers comes just to the end of the width of your two fingers, you have found the correct distance away from the eye sockets for your deer. This is a good rule of thumb.

Forming Your Clay

When you have the hide pulled over the neck and head of the deer and you have the antlers secured firmly onto the form, you can move on to the next step which is rebuilding the muscle structure for the animal you are mounting. Taking your molding clay, you can roll up pieces and place them where you see fit as naturally follows the muscle structure for a deer or doe similar to the one that you are attempting to recreate. You will be doing this for the face, back of the head, and the top of the head mostly in order to fill in the form to make it look proper. This will also provide an adequate transition between the body of the form and the head and face areas of the deer making it look more natural and organic. You don’t want to get your mount found on one of Chelsidermy’s bad taxidermy posts after all.

Placing Your Deer’s Eyes:

There are many eyes that you can find for your deer in many different locations. Once you’ve found the particular eyes that you want to add to your mount, you can put some of the molding clay onto the back of each eye in preparation to put it onto your form. This will keep the eye firmly in place for the life of your mount and give your deer its eyes in a long-lasting way. Place the eyes into the form where you want them and make sure you work on it getting into the eye socket of the form. Take a step back and check to see if the eyes are level and in the proper location specifically. The eyes to your mount are incredibly important and you should use caution and diligence when placing them. Use a flashlight if you need to. Once you have placed the actual eyeball into the mount, you now need to roll up a little bit more of your molding clay. Take this little bit of molding clay and place it up under the eyeball on the deer in order to start building the top and bottom eyelids. This is needed anatomically, but also is needed during the stage of the process in order to help keep the glass eyeball itself firmly secured to the form.

Hide Paste and Epoxy on the Face:

Now you are going to take 2-part epoxy and apply it to the base of your antlers in order to keep the hide securely fit around the face and antlers. Just a little bit of this will do and placing it around the base of the antlers will work perfectly to keep everything in place where it should be.

Carefully take some of that hide paste and start painting it onto the face and any areas that haven’t been covered yet by the earlier steps. Be very careful of where you put the glue during this step as applying too much will cause the glue to seep out and affect the end product. This portion of the process is incredibly delicate and requires a higher level of care and attention than some of the other portions. Make sure that you avoid putting any glue on the eyeball and antlers or you will have to spend time and effort to clean it all off once you are done.

Pulling the Face onto the Deer

Now we can start to pull the face over onto the deer, and it is actually starting to look like an animal again. Wow, at this point we like to just stop and appreciate the beauty of nature and the wild idea of what exactly we are doing here. Be careful placing the face onto the head of the form and take your time as it is easy to accidentally place the skin in the wrong places if you aren’t incredibly diligent. Once you have pulled the face all the way over the form and everything is set, the glue will lock everything into place really well and nothing will move from where you have placed it on the deer form.

Sewing the Hide

Starting from the top of the hide moving downwards, you will start sewing the hide together. This part of the process will easily take the longest and will require the most patience out of the whole mount. You will first complete closing the hide around the head and down to the base of the neck at the top. Once you finish this area tie off your stitching and lock it into place with some superglue or a comparable glue. Once you have secured your hide around the head and face of the deer you will move on to finish sewing the rest of the neck and shoulder area.

Putting in the Details of the Face

Taking a small detailing tool, you will move up to the face and tuck in the hide and face skin into the correct areas such as the mouth and nose. Making sure the skin is correctly stuffed up under the eyes as well is a necessity during this stage of completion. There are so many little details and nuanced pieces to this step, and you can find book and videos online that may help you get a visual representation of this a little bit better.

You are going to put a little bit more hide paste onto the nose and the end of the face and finish pulling the skin over these areas. This step is immensely detail oriented and you should be using your small detailing tool here as well.

Board up the Mount

You can take a staple gun now and secure the rest of the hide down to the bottom after you finish it the rest of the way down with your hide paste. Once you have done this you will most likely have a little bit of extra hide on the end. You can easily trim this excess off of the end. Place the back mounting board onto your mount and enjoy!

Recap & Summary

In this article you found out the detailed process of how to mount a taxidermy deer or doe. It sure is a gorgeous process to revitalize once living creatures and bring them back to life for your memories and happiness for years to come. Who would have guessed it took so much effort and skill/knowledge in order to pull it off and make it look right? You know what types of tools to use, and the techniques needed in order to make it all work, and now you can go and try it out for yourself if you want to.

Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read this article! : )