Editor’s note: In the previous two issue Mike Kirkhart and his son Buddy showed in detail how a reproduction for this striped bass was prepared for the final painting process. In this issue Mike will explain in detail his professional process for painting this striper reproduction. The striper is going to his friend and client Larry Jones who caught and released his trophy fish (45 inches, 40 pounds) below the Tennessee River Dam fishing with guide Todd Asher. The full story and photo reference is in Issue 129.

Do you steal from your business? Maybe I should not be so harsh and instead ask, “Do you draw money out of your business when you should not?” Nearly one out of three American business owners do. Even more alarming is that 1 in 3 business failures are linked to employee theft and fraud. It’s 15 times more likely that your business will be targeted by an employee than by anyone else, and 75 percent of these crimes will go unnoticed.

 Remember—you are an employee of your business.

I had the idea of carving a hand holding a fish for release for several years. It seemed to be a good idea and as far as I know, no one has done this kind of carving before. It would be a first in the fish carving arena, although there have been molded and cast hands in taxidermy competition many times before. I was contemplating carving it for competition, then selling it as a second goal. I figured both options made it worth the effort to be good. At this time I was only stuck with selling it. Oh well, I decided to do it.

2019 World Taxidermy and Fish Carving Championships® Approach

Be there when we present $30,750 in cash prizes to winners at the 2019 World Taxidermy & Fish Carving Championships. April 30–May 4, 2019, Expo Center in Springfield, Missouri.

All Cash Awards

COMPETITORS’ AWARD: $14,250.00 CASH AWARDS

$7,500 from Head Quarters and Big Rock Sports

$2,250 from World Show Award Fund

$1,500 from Payer Eyes

$1,000 Mohr Taxidermy Specialties

$1,000 from Coppersmith Global Logistics

$1,000.00 Midwest Fur Dressing

• Master Division:

First $4,000   Second $3,000

Third $1,500  Fourth $750

Fifth $500

• Professional Division:

First $2,000   Second $1,500

Third $750     Fourth $500

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When I began my research on quail of North America, I really did not know there were so many species and subspecies in Central America, Mexico, and North America. The quail of the American continent are referred to as New World quail and those of the European and Asia continents are referred to as Old World quail. Of course, hunters and taxidermists consider them gamebirds and depending on what part of the country you live in, quail are quail, with a regional name for each of the species.

     In my search for reference it was easy to see that the most common species in the United States were the California quail, bobwhite quail, Gambel’s quail, and scaled quail (commonly called blue quail). I was able to find some good reference for these. The mountain quail, which is found in the mountains of the western USA, was a tough one to find reference where I could acquire copyrights.

There are many subspecies of all of these, so for the purpose of this photo reference, I will group the photos according to the species name that is common with the subspecies. I will give brief descriptions of the four species that are most common in the USA with range maps of their distribution.