Remounting an Antelope

This is a antelope that we are going to remount.  We will walk through the steps explaining where mistakes were made and how you might avoid these on your mounts.

Notice here that the horns (skull) is leaning to far back.   We will find that the skull does not line up correctly with the bridge of the nose.  Also look how the lip is exposed.  It was not glued in place so the lip pulled during the drying period.

There is nothing right about the lip placement.  This is just poor craftsmanship.

Here you can see just how off the placement of this skull was.  I used this antelope in one of my last classes.  We found that every aseptic of this mount was incorrect.  

Notice that the eye set specs are not even close.  The skin was mounted right to the mannikin with no alteration at all.

When the client received his mount, the ear had this fold in it.  This is just poor work and total disregard for the client's trophy.  This is what you get when you look for a deal.  What a deal.

The taxidermist used paper-mach when molding in the skull.  This is not the material to use.  Paper-mach has no adhesion properties and nothing can be glued to it. 

This is a very important photo.  Here you can see that there has been no alteration at all.  The eye sockets have been cut off and the bridge of the nose is missing.  This causes the taxidermist to guess at skull placement.  As you can see he guessed wrong.

In the next few photos, you will see that there is no pin holes.  This skin was never pin in place, nor was there any glue used.

These areas has not been scuffed and no glue was used.  Notice there are no pin holes.

Here you can see that the head is to wide and needed to be split and reduced.

The skull also is to low on the mannikin.

Looking at the mannikin, you can see that the eye sockets on this form are just wrong.  This needs to be adjusted and mounting straight to the mannikin without a correction will produce a poor product.

  

Notice that the form is to wide in the back.  The mannikin is just to large in the head.  The neck might fit find, but the head will need to be sized.  Get this measurement from the skull.

This mannikin is just a poor mannikin to start with.  

Here is the finish mount.  Look closely at the eye detail.  The line of vision and eye angle set is important to get correct.  The antelope has a 9-11 degree eye set. This will give the correct look of an antelope.

Attention to skull width and eye angle set is the key to a life like mount.  Look at the before and after photos.  The difference is shocking.