So a year ago, almost to the day, I took this nice buck. Not a monster, but still a beautiful tasty animal. I have not had a deer mounted, in the traditional skin over a styrofoam form with the antlers attached and glass marbles for eyes since I was a kid an someone else was paying for it. For a while I would just saw off the antlers, and I have a box of them now the kids play with, but some years ago I came up with a do-it-yourself way of preserving the whole skull, imbuing it with a patina more like what one would expect in oak woods, and making it, overall, presentable, for less than $10 in used supplies.
Last fall, after butchering the deer, I buries the head, skin and all, back in my garden, and placed the pagoda I grew runner beans on this year, over it. The soil was mounded over the antlers at the time, but over the summer the soil settled. There was a tiny bit of rodent gnaw marks on the exposed tips of the antlers, but that is all.
So first step in reclaiming the skull from the earth, is digging around the skull in about a 4 foot diameter circle, down one spade length in depth.
Then, working in from the side, careful not to hit the skull with the shovel, you lever the whole thing out of the ground. The nose bones are thin to the point of fragility, so take care as you move it.
Remove the dirt gently by hand, along with any hair still clinging to it. The skin is long gone by this point, as well as pretty much any non-bone organic material. Ants and beetles have spent all summer feasting on it and cleaning it off.
From there it is to the wash tub in the basement. Hot water and an old toothbrush are used to scrub out all of the dirt and bits until all you are left with is the bare skull.
Then it is out in the sun to dry while Claire and I walked to the local hardware store for Super Glue and clear aerosol acrylic, glossy finish.
Just as an fyi, make sure the skull is completely dry before the next steps. We take a hairdryer to it, making sure that there is no water anywhere inside the skull.
A white tail deer’s skull is made up of a LOT of bones, and the joins will loosen over the years, to the point where it comes apart. That is, unless you make it so they cannot. I use up 8 tubes of super glue, going over each and every connection.
Pay special attention to the teeth, securing them in with a full tube of glue on each side of the mouth. Even the pallet of the mouth has joints in the bone, so make sure to get each of those as well.
As I previously stated, the bones of the nose are fragile, and glue helps to keep them stable.
The bones of the ear are many and intricate, so expect to use a half tube of glue per ear at least.
Once you have used up all 8 tubes of Super Glue, let it sit for an hour to really harden up.
Then it is time to start applying coats of the clear acrylic, at intervals about 10 minutes apart, until you have applied about 6 coats on the top and bottom of not only the skull, but the antlers as well. Have somewhere safe it can be done, with good ventilation, and where it is not going to stick to anything as you work. Make sure to spray up into the nasal cavity, eye sockets, and brain case multiple times from various angles.
This is just a close up of the skull when I was done.
The back of the skull has a convenient hole where the spinal cord entered from which the skull can be hung on a nail in a wall, or if you want to, you can just set it on a table if you are fairly certain that it is not going to get dumped on the floor by a curious kid. Overall, not too bad for the price.
