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August 5, 2012
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Hi everybody! Well i’m giving it another shot today. Several months back I skinned out my first bird, a Mallard hen, and then proceeded to shred it to pieces on the wire wheel.
I did learn from it at least and feel better prepared now. Biggest mistake I made was letting the skin dry out to much before fleshing and not soaking or wetting it down before wire wheeling it. Another change I made was getting a stiff wire wheel. The other wheel was soft and with the dry skin was not a good combo as I was having to put to much pressure on it ripping holes in the skin.
I’m splitting the process up, skinning/fleshing today then refreeze and finish mounting in a week or two. Even though I’ve watched hours of video, it’s still a little to much for me right now to go from start to finish in one setting.
Hope it goes good and I can get some pics up when finished for some constructive criticism from you folks here. Everyone here seems to be very helpful and does great work and I would love to learn from you all. Take care everyone and have a great weekend! JB
August 5, 2012
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Well, not to bad but not to good either darnit. Took me a hour and half to get the body skinned out and everything went fairly well thru that but inverting the wings ate my lunch. It didn’t help that both wings were broken. One wasn’t to bad and I got it all the way down to the wrist. Not over the wrist but to it. The other wing was broken from shot damage right at the elbow and that really messed me up and is were I have left it for now. Put it in baggie, filled with water and freezeing it.
I have a good friend that does taxidermy and has been encouraging me to get into it and I think I will wait untill we can get together sometime so he can guide me thru the rest of it. I just really wanted to accomplish this on my own but I know I can cut the learning curve greatly by getting help.
Mucho respect for all of you that do this. I can tell it’s take me a lot of practise to get this down!
August 5, 2012
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Finished up with the skinning today. My buddy gave some good advice with my problem wing.
After thawing out I was able to open the wing up a lot better because it was still plenty damp and was able to get it inverted most of the way. Also used Borax to get in there with a small modeling tool to get the rest of the meat out. That helped a lot. Another thingis it’s amazing what a fresh mind can do. It didn’t seem near as intimidating as I remembered it being. Reviewing that part of dvd’s helped also. Have a great weekend everyone!
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