Not that it’s worth anything, but from time to time I will be asked for my advice from some aspiring young person about the prospect of him taking up taxidermy as a hobby or, I shudder to say, as a career choice. Some skinny-jean clad pup will come up to me and ask, “Yo, Gramps, what does it take to become a ‘critter stuffer?’ It don’t look that complicated, plus, if someone as old as you can still do it, how hard could it be?” The thing about smart alecks is they never see the whole picture.

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It can be really challenging to find a base that perfectly fits your animal, but is there ever really a perfect fit? There is with Contour Sheet! The revolutionary product from Scenes-n-Nature allows THE you to quickly and effortlessly create custom bases that perfectly fit any mount, eliminating floating feet for good.

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LIPS and MOUTH

Shape: Lower (frontal), Upper, Corners: The front of the bottom lip normally shows a bit and should gently touch the top lips where they arc into the cleft. There should be some definition between lower and upper. As the upper lips continue rearward, they should show some arc as they reach the back corner.

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A common problem when mounting large lifesize mammals is the front legs seem to be too long on the form and the skin won’t come together in the chest area. You can see an example of this in Photo 1. While test-fitting the skin, the feet on this hyena skin reach just above the ankles. Our first impression is that the legs on the form are too long and they need to be shortened. Shortening legs can be done, but it is difficult because you have to cut and re-install rods, and this doesn’t solve the problem of the chest area not fitting. Everything else from the chest back fit perfectly on this form.

So now I’ll show you how to make some simple cuts and make this adjustment without having to cut the legs.

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I mounted my first alligator back in the 1970s soon after they were taken off of the protected species list. I had to draw on experience alone and learned my lessons by making and seeing my mistakes. There was little written guidance to draw from and no videos that I could find. During this early period of my career in taxidermy, I had several Louisiana friends in taxidermy and soon found out we were all trying to figure out the best way. We shared experiences and what we had learned about mounting this new source of income, as alligators were the newest game animal to become available to taxidermists.

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