Keep trophy hide cool, dry for mounting

Cool and dry. That’s how you want to keep your trophy’s hide if you want to mount it when you get back home, but don’t take too long to get it there. If you take much longer than 24 hours, there is the possibility your taxidermist won’t want to mount your hard-earned trophy. Hair slip on us bald guys is one thing, but hair slip on your trophy’s hide is another.

Hair slip refers to the loss of hair and generally is associated with improper care in the field. At the least, repairing hair slip requires time, skill and willingness on the part of your taxidermist, especially if the finished product is to be something worth having. Or your taxidermist might tell you to take your trophy elsewhere.

Taking care of your trophy’s hide is similar to taking care of the meat, and it all begins with removing the hide. Keep in mind that with hair on the outside and fat on the inside, an animal’s hide works a lot like a sleeping bag. It is designed to retain heat. Heat fosters the growth of bacteria, and bacteria cause hair slip. So you want to remove it as soon as you can.

While there are many approaches to skinning a big-game animal, Vikki Werner, of Werner Family Taxidermy in Henderson, says she likes to start by cutting the hide around the torso and behind the shoulders so she has plenty with which to work when doing a shoulder mount. This cut also serves as a stopping point for her knife during the gutting process. When that is taken care of, she splits the hide along the backbone and all the way to the ears.

"That way it will peel down and you can get all the neck meat out," she said.

Some of the mistakes Werner has seen hunters make include putting a warm hide in a plastic bag and placing a hide directly on ice.

"They (shouldn’t) put it in a bag right away, especially a plastic bag, because the hide is still warm," she said. "If you put it in there, it’s like a microwave effect, so then you are cooking the hair off."

On the other hand, once you have made sure the hide has cooled completely, it can be bagged and placed in an ice chest, one preferably filled with block ice since it takes longer to melt than a bag of cubed ice.

"You just want to keep it cool. It doesn’t have to be frozen," Werner said. "You want to keep it cool like you would your meat."

When you put the hide on ice, make sure it will remain dry because moisture, like heat, also breeds the bacteria that can lead to hair slip and other issues that can affect the quality of your finished mount. Milk jugs filled with ice are a good option because the water is contained as the ice melts.

Some people like to salt the hide, but Werner recommends checking with your taxidermist before going afield with your bag of salt. She prefers that her clients, in most situations, refrain from using the salt shaker on their hides. If a hunter salts a hide that hasn’t been cleaned well, the salt can cause that meat to bond with the hide.

"If they put salt on it and leave it too long, it turns into jerky, and if it turns into jerky, we can’t get it off," Werner said. "And if we can’t get it off, then it means the tanning solution, the preservatives, cannot preserve the hide. So they ruin it."

If you can’t get to your taxidermist right away, put the hide in a freezer so you can halt the growth of bacteria. A refrigerator will stall it for only two days.

Freelance writer Doug Nielsen is a conservation educator for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. His "In the Outdoors" column, published Thursday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is not affiliated with or endorsed by the NDOW. Any opinions he states in his column are his own. He can be reached at intheoutdoorslv@gmail.com.