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April 7, 2013
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I got my fall hen turkey mounted and finished up. My third life size. I mounted the head with the real skull like I would a quail or grouse. It tuned out really well. If I can figure out how to post pics, I will.
What I did was cut away the bottom of the skull to expose the brain cavity and removed the thin bone between the eyes and super cleaned the skull well enough that I could use the brain cavity for chip dip and would not hesitate to lick the bowl clean. Then I put Vaseline on the end of my Research Mannikins small turkey neck, filled the brain cavity with Bondo and inserted the neck into the cavity until the Bondo kicked. I removed the neck/wire from the skull and now I had a perfect fit.
I filled the eye sockets with Apoxie Sculpt to set the eyes and to form eye lids and eye rings around the 12mm turkey eyes.
I cut the head skin as if I was doing a freeze dried head. The incision was made where the the feathers would hide the seam. I inverted the snood by using a tiny dowel and a #11 scalpel and filled it with Apoxie Sculpt.
I hot glued the head to the neck and since it was pre- fit when the Bondo was kicking, it made a super strong juncture. I used T pins in a line from the head down the front of the artificial neck in a manner so as to give me a structure to form the dewlap with Apoxie Sculpt. I clayed the head to neck and dewlap juncture with Critter Clay and built up the jowls with clay as well.
I used acrylic caulk plus silicone as a hide paste and glued the head skin down to the skull and neck form and the neck skin to the neck form and brought the seam together and used a few pins to hold the skin until the caulk dried.
After all was dry, which was 3 weeks, I built up the few small caruncles she had (5) with Apoxie Sculpt and also for the greater caruncles as well as any slight gap in the neck to head seam. Then I used Hydromist water based paints in turkey head blue, super hide white, gil red, dark red and yellow to paint the head and white, yellow and dark brown for the beak. I used photo reference of the actual bird which was a silvery violet color.
I feel really good about how well it turned out, however, I wish I would have built the jowls and cheeks up a little more and the eye rings I did seems a little too thick even though I have reference pics that match the thicker eye rings, I just like the looks of thinner ones.
September 26, 2011
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Sounds like a cool project– if you want, email me the pics and I will put them on this thread.
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April 7, 2013
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Thanks Aaron! Emails sent.
September 26, 2011
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Looks very nice–here are the pics Tanglewood emailed me of his hen mount.
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April 7, 2013
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Thank you Aaron.
Nice! Super job Tanglewood. I will have to remember to refer back to this thread if I ever get a turkey head.
Vic
April 7, 2013
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Thanks Vic. I thought the head was going to be the challenge, however, once the plan was worked out, It was easy.
The leg placement and injecting of the feet turned out to be quite difficult. For some reason I couldn’t get the legs to look right. When I posed them to look like they should, they didn’t fit the base in a way that kept the body level, So, I ended up with less than stellar legs. I couldn’t get the injection fluid to flow. Even with water, I did a bunch of small injections and got enough in there to keep them from turning to tooth picks, but not enough to look right to me. I have read, since then, that a smaller needle is better. Even though the legs and feet look like I painted them wrong, When she was alive, they were all purply black with just a little reddish orange on the “shin” scales. All the hens there and some of the older toms are that color.
The base is a wall base with an artificial post from McKenzie. A little oak leaves, moss, barbed wire, and a dusting of snow made it look just like it did when I shot her.
Just a question if you don’t mind. What did you use to preserve the skin on the head? Dry preservative, some kind of bird tan?
Next question…Do you think this procedure will work on a Tom Turkey?
From what I always read it seemed the only option was to either use and artificial or a freeze dry head. I think that is what really got my interest up on this article. I personally don’t go for the artificial noses etc. that many use these days, but that is just me and I am only a hobbyist so time isn’t an important factor in my case. I do prefer to use what nature provided whenever possible.
If there are any problem with the bird I sure don’t see them! But then again, we are all a bit more critical of our own work and always (hopefully) want to improve and make it better the next go round.
Vic
April 7, 2013
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I used borax to preserve the head.
Altho you can use the real head for a tom, I wouldn’t recommend it. The amount of time involved to produce a mediocre product just isn’t worth it.
The only reason the hens head worked was because of the lack of caruncles and the abundance of head feathers and smooth skin.
Thanks for the compliments, Vic.
This being my third life size turkey I’m pleased with how it turned out. There are plenty of stuff to work on and with practice I will get those things down, however, I gotta kill another tom to work on. I killed 2 jakes this year and I’m holding out for a tom , which seams to be a nonexistent entity this year. I’m pretty much a hobbiest too, so I have to rely on my own stuff and I can’t wait to try out the stuff I learned on Taxidermy Insider.
April 7, 2013
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Also, The pic of the apoxie work on the head is before I did the clay work to make a smooth transition from skull to the neck and clay work to smooth into the apoxie dewlap. You need that clay transition for a good flow from skull to neck.
April 7, 2013
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Vic, if you are not onto artificial, freeze dried is the way to go. Nothing artificial about it. When you have a head freeze dried, you are using the real natural head that came with the bird. Having the head freeze dried is very similar to having a deer cape tanned for a shoulder mount.
Artificial heads can look fairly life like and I have used them as they have a lot of pros and few cons, however, you can’t beat a good freeze dried head for realism.
Maybe one day in my spare time (haha, what’s that?) I will get a book and read up on freeze dry. Probably won’t be worth the money to buy the equipment but it would be interesting to know how to do it.
Vic
April 7, 2013
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There are plenty of freeze driers that will do it for you. Also, you can buy freeze dried heads that they have in stock. I always keep my own heads and those of friends and family as well as the heads I get in from tail and beard mounts and send them into a freeze drier just for that purpose. Lately I scaled way down, so the heads are few and far between.
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