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Originally posted by LadyT ( www.BrandonWildlifeStudio.com ) at Gut Pile Style.com:

European Deer Mounts

Have you ever thought about doing a deer skull and antlers in a European mount, but don't know where to start? Piece o' cake.......

First thing... I do not recommend boiling. This will weaken the bone structure over time.

Beetles are good...but not everyone has those..lol.

I would suggest masceration. Masceration takes a little longer but the bone will stay in tack along with the nasal cavities.

Here is what you do:

Clean all the meat and hair off of the skull that you can by knife.
Fill a bucket with water enough to cover the skull (not on antlers)
You can wrap the antlers with aluminum foil to prevent fading and such.
Put the head in the water and place the bucket outside....away from your house.
Do not cover the bucket, and come back every so often to check the water levels.
This process does stink, but it is the best method other than beetles.

Now after you pull it out of the water, rinse it off under a water hose and let it air dry outside during a sunny day. After it is dry scrape any remaining junk off the skull. Put it into a container filled with peroxide (the kind from wal-mart). Do not let the peroxide get on the antlers. You want to use a dark container for this, as light breaks down the strength of the peroxide (also cover the container with aluminum foil). Leave it in the peroxide for 1-2 days. Pull it out and let it dry in the sun again.

Your done!


Or you could always send it to me...

LadyT

visit us @ www.brandonwildlifestudio.com

He Couldn't Kill A Buck If It Was Tied To A Tree

Before you start thinking moose, what I call Bullwinkle is a whitetail deer that has a set of antlers on it like a moose.  Anyway, I had gone down into a little hollow where 3 small hollows converged into 1.  I had only deer hunted once down in there once before, seeing nothing but turkeys.  I hadn't been seeing any deer in any of my usual spots, so I thought this place was just as good as any.  Since I really didn't know where I was going to hunt, I had decided to just sit on the ground and not worry with a tree stand.  It was our rifle season and I had a Stainless and Camo Thompson/Center Encore rifle in .223 Rem.  The rifle had been my step-dad's.  He had just recently passed away and I really wanted to get a deer with the rifle since he had really liked that little gun.  For deer, it's on the light side, but I don't care what it is, you put a whole through both lungs and the deer is going down!

I picked out a tree on the side of a hill where I could see pretty well if anything came up into or out of the two small points or the opposite hill.  After sitting there a little while and listening to all of the squirrels (guess I didn't quite thin them out enough during squirrel season prior to this), I kept hearing something in the leaves that didn't sound exactly like a squirrel.  Looking over to my right, I could start to make out the head of a doe coming down one of the points.  She was still in a bunch of thick stuff, so there wasn't any way that I could shoot just yet.  Normally, I like neck shots on deer because it ruins less meat and they anchor the deer right there.  I knew though with the .223 that a neck shot was pretty much out of the question.  I didn't figure the little 55 grain bullet had enough "uumph" behind it to do what I needed it to do to the neck.  I had a good shot at the doe's neck, but had to wait until she stepped out a little more so that I could have a broad-side shot at her lungs.  She stood there for a little while and picked around, but just as soon as she started moving again, she must have caught just enough of my scent to make her stop.  With the way that the hills are down in there, the wind swirls, making it difficult to hunt the area unless there's gale-force winds!  The doe quietly just turned around and went dead away from me, not offering a shot.  CRAP!

After sitting there about a half hour longer, I heard something running behind me, but it was coming around to my left.  I stood up to get a better view and saw that it was a coyote.  OH BOY!!!  With the way the coyote was running, and the lay of the land, I would see him for just a second and then he would drop down out of sight.  I started grunting and whistling trying to get him to stop, which he never did.  CRAP!

I sat back down and thought of a bleat can I had.  I flipped the can a couple of times, in hopes that the coyote would come back.  All the sudden on the opposite hill, here came Bullwinkle down the hill at a trot!  OH CRAP!!  He hit the bottom of the hill and stopped, just as I shouldered the rifle.  I could see his left ear and that half of his rack.  It was tall, thick, and extended 2-3" out past his ear.  I thought, "Come out past that tree just a bit and you're mine!"  No such luck!  Just as quickly as he had came down the hill, back up he went, only this time he was angling away from me.  I layed down, throwing my pack in front and resting the rifle on it.  I watched him through the scope going away, hoping that he would stop and give me a shot.  No such luck.  I lost sight of him as he hit the top of the hill.  CRAP!  CRAP!  CRAP!!!!!

I flipped the bleat can a few more times and grunted on the call a few times, hoping that he would come back to check it out.  He never did.  But, it's like they say, he didn't get that big by being stupid!  LOL!  That was the last time I saw him.  I made 8 more trips out in and around the area, but he wasn't to be seen.  To my knowledge no one down there has gotten him, so maybe he and I will tangle again next year.  I'm going to stick to the ridges and hill tops to help control my scent though.

So that's the story of me almost getting Bullwinkle.  I didn't get a deer, but I still had fun that day, as irritating as it was!  LOL!!!

Big58cal

Recently, I finally decided to break down and get a "good" gun safe.  I've had a cheap sheet metal safe for years.  At the time that I got it, it was all that I could afford, and was adequate for my needs.  Since that time, my needs have grown substantially!  My poor little cheap gun safe just wouldn't hold anymore, so I finally decided to break down and get a good one.

After doing quite a bit of research on them, and then physically looking at quite a few, I settled on a Fort Knox safe.  For the money, they had more or better features than other safes available.  Of the models they have available, the Defender series looked like it would serve me well.  It doesn't have all of the "eye candy" that the more expensive models do, but functionally, it's just as good as they are.  The place where I was getting the safe, didn't have the exact one I wanted.  They had the safe I wanted, in the color I wanted, but it had a few other options with it that I wasn't wanting to invest in just yet.  After hageling with them for a while, I finally got them down to a price both of us could live with on the safe they had there.  Now that I've got the safe, I'm glad that I did go ahead and get the options.  They were worth the extra money.  As far as the safe itself, it's 72.5" tall, 41" wide, 28" deep, and weighs (without any optional stuff) 1,120 lbs.  The options I got were the reinforced fire door (add 167 lbs), 5 prong handle, inside light kit, and electronic lock.  So, with everything in it, the safe is right at around 1,300 lbs.

Prior to getting the safe, I knew that it was going to be heavy.  My house is 157 years old, so I knew that the floor would need bracing up prior to bringing the safe in.  I got two 6x6's, four solid concrete blocks, and 4 jack stands to handle all of the load.  After finally dragging everything under the house in the crawl space, I tried to get everything in place.  I tried laying on my back and holding a 6x6 up with my feet, while trying to get the jack stands in place with my hands.  This didn't work "as I had hoped".  After trying this for about half an hour, I finally gave up, saying several choice words in the process.  The next afternoon, I had my wife crawl under the house with me to put the jack stands in place.  Again, I held the 6x6's up with my feet, but this time she put the stands in place.  That went much smoother than the previous evening!

Now, with the floor braced up and everything level, it came time to get the safe.  I had checked with the place where I was getting the safe about delivery.  They charged $300 for delivery and bringing it into the house.  They say hind sight is 20/20.  If I had it to do over, I would pay the money!!!!!  But, being a tight-wad, I decided to do it myself.  My brother had gotten a similar safe a few years ago and had gotten his in his house with the help of a couple of his buddies without any trouble.  How hard could it be, right?  I guess knowing about his safe had given me a false sense of security.  I seemed to had overlooked the fact that this one was about 500 lbs heavier than his!  I had asked a couple of neighbors if they would help me, and had a guy from work that was also going to help.  I thought with 4 people, we should be able to easily get the safe in the house.  Man, was I WRONG!!!!!

I got over to the place, paid for the safe, and then backed my truck and trailer up to their loading dock.  They brought it out with a forklift and sat it down behind the trailer.  With the weight of the safe, they had to lay it down because it was too top heavy to stand upright on the trailer.  Two guys got on the trailer to balance the safe when the guy with the forklift started tipping it.  Once they got it balanced, the guy on the forklift got off and climbed on the trailer to help lay the safe down.  I should have known that the whole ordeal was going to be a pain when they started laying it down on the trailer.  The weight of the safe hit the trailer (with the 3 guys holding it and laying it down easy), the back end of the trailer almost hit the ground and the tongue of the trailer and the back of my truck flew up in the air!  After the safe was on the trailer, they took the forklift and pushed it on up on the trailer.

On the way home with the safe, I called the guy from work to have him come over and help.  Once at the house, I backed the trailer up to the front porch and got the two neighbors over to help (one of the guys is a "big ol' boy!").  The 4 of us tried to lift the safe up from the trailer and couldn't budge it.  We then went and got 2 "spudge bars" (long heavy steel bars with a flat edge on one end to pry with) and stuck them under the top edge to raise it up enough to get a 2x4 and a 4x4 under it.  After it was raised up a little, we could get our fingers under it and started lifting.  It was everything the 4 of us could do to raise it up into an upright position!

OK, now it was upright on the porch (finally!).  I had borrowed the place's dolly, so we strapped the dolly onto it and took the bolts loose inside that were holding the pallet onto the bottom (as well as taking all of the shelves out of the inside to lighten it a little more).  After taking the storm door loose going into the house so it would be open all of the way, we finally tipped it and started rolling it toward the door.  Getting over the door sill into the house was a pain, but we finally got it into the edge of the house.

Prior to getting the safe, when I was bracing the floor up under the house where the safe would sit, I was looking at the span between the front door and where the safe would eventually sit.  There is about an 8' span between a concrete support pillar and the front door.  I thought that with that short of a span and the short amount of time the safe would be on it, everything should hold.  When we got the safe in the house, with it resting on the dolly, the weight of all 1,300 lbs of the safe was concentrated on the two wheels of the dolly.  When we started rolling the dolly, the hardwood floor boards in the hallway started cracking wherever the dolly wheels were!  All of the sudden, a vision of the safe breaking through the floor entered my head and I shouted, "Let's MOVE!!!"  We got the safe over the top of the concrete pillar (the floor boards cracking the whole way) and set it flat to distribute the weight.  We scooted it the remaining 6-8' into place.

1,300 lbs sounds like quite a bit of weight, and it is.  But you truely can't appreciate just how heavy 1,300 lbs is until you've got ahold of it and are trying to move it!  Steve (the big ol' boy) and I were on the front end of the dolly rolling it while the other two guys were on the back side of it pushing.  At one point, Steve had to let go a little to get a better grip, and quite a bit of the weight that he was holding transferred totally onto me!  Again, you truely can't appreciate how heavy this thing is until you've got ahold of it!  After we got the safe in the house and in place, I thanked the guys for helping me, offered them a beer, and then appologized to them for me asking them to help with it.  Moving something heavy (stove, refrigerator, washer, etc) wouldn't normally be that big of a deal, but this thing was a FREAKING MONSTER!  It was so heavy, I felt bad that I had asked them to help with it.

The safe is in place now and I've very happy with it.  I've checked the braces under the floor and everything is holding.  I've decided though, if the wife and I ever sell this house, the safe is staying with it!  I'M NOT MOVING THE SAFE AGAIN!!!  Either that, or I'll pay the money and have someone else move the monster!

Big58cal