I had some time this weekend so I took a few detail shots of some of my work. The devil is in the details. The first is the eye on my blacktail. Notice I used glass eyes with whites, and I exposed the white at the back. This looks killer up close. The next is a standard eye on my whitetail. When modeling facial features it's important to study the species you are depicting and to make sure you model in the appropriote detail. Last deer picture is a mouth and nose detail. Tight lips with no visible clay pressed in to cover mistakes is something to look for in a quality mount. Also, making sure the nasal septum is rolled in correctly is key. Allot of "pretty good" taxidermists don't seem to have a good grasp of this detail.

We were talking about full body bear mounts. Don't overlook the cost of base work, as I probably had $1000 of time wrapped up in the base alone. The rocks are foam, spackle painted with zolatone, and the leaves are just plastic leaves from the craft store glued down with heat glue. The base insert itself is foam, coated in resin and then covered in dry sand. Notice, before the resin and sand coats, I used a Dremel Tool to carve out a couple of bear tracks in back. This is a time consuming detail, but it adds tremendous visual appeal to the finished product.