The hunter did a double-take—was it really what he thought it was? In plain sight were two long-dead skulls of two whitetail bucks, locked forever, from a battle old as time. The hunter, Wes Archer, one of my long-time clients, told me of his find. I told him that many years ago I had mounted a pair like that with a lot of difficulty. Ten years passed. Wes took the skulls out of his closet, walked in my shop with them, and said, “Let’s do the damn thing.” Taxidermists learn every day, and trial-and-error must be prominent in our DNA. All locked bucks are not locked alike!

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A bluegill probably represents a fisherman’s first fish over other species of freshwater fish. They are fun to catch, great to eat, and make very attractive mounts. When I was building my taxidermy clientele back in the early 1960s and 1970s, I completed three stringer mounts of bluegills, with a few other members of the sunfish family added in. They were displayed with my name attached in the three largest sporting goods retailers in my area. Bluegills are easy to skin, mount and paint, and stringer mounts represent what most freshwater fishermen bring home from the rivers and bayous here in Louisiana. I cannot begin to calculate how much fish taxidermy these three displays brought to my growing business. Even though bass were number one on my volume list, bluegills were number two, followed by crappies. That’s because I would get 10 to 12 stringer mounts of bluegill to do every year, with 5 to 7 fish on each stringer.

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Glenn’s short story started just as Glen Browning's always did with information about the subject, and it sucked me right in thinking it was from “Mr. Bird Man Browning,” with me even thinking that it is really ironic that we both had wives with fathers of the same name. I am still laughing at myself as the rest of the second paragraph finally brought me back to earth. John Moody and Glenn Moore are two of the finest men I have had the pleasure to know, and this excellent short story, by and about family, is something we had to share. After all, it came to us right before Christmas 2020 as we were being told families should not gather because of the pandemic.

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