WNY Bowhunter

First card check at this spot...never saw this guy before. He's definitely got the stubby body proportions of a piebald. Would make a cool full bodied mount in another year or two. Tried to edit the pics to remove some of the glare.

First card check at this spot...never saw this guy before. He's definitely got the stubby body proportions of a piebald. Would make a cool full bodied mount in another year or two. Tried to edit the pics to remove some of the glare.

Oil paints and dirt

I tried my hand at fixing up a set of sheds that I found a couple years ago that the squirrels had their way with. Really tough to match colors but I think they turned out pretty good. Before: the right side had several holes chewed into the G2 right below the split, the left side had the top half chewed to a thin sliver remaining and the beam had been worked over pretty good from the G3 to the tip. I didn't add any inches of antler, just basically filled in what the rodents had chewed off... Repaired version

Nice one!

Did that big 8pt from the past few years make it?

Good up and comer...almost a 8pt already!!!

Pull #2...

Also my .308 bullet of choice!!! I've used the Nosler 165 grain BTs for the past 6 or 7 seasons. Way better than the hornady SSTs that I used previously.

Sure can, as long as you didn't kill it with that girlie Mathews bow...;)

Can you post a pic of your buck? Hope he turns out great!

Spoiled capes are the most common reason to use a replacement cape. People also mount sheds, deadheads, replicas, remounts and deer that they killed in the past that for whatever reason didn't get mounted at the time of kill. Most local buthershops get picked over by local taxidermist for spare capes that would otherwise just be thrown out.

Correct. However, it is a remount of a remount...lol. The year that I killed this deer was the year that I decided to try my hand at taxidermy. A friend of mine offered to mount the deer for me at cost and walk me through the process. In the end, I ended up with a rushed, crappy looking mount. The following year I decided to take deer in for other people and didn't want them thinking that I mounted that one so I remounted it to hang in my shop as a display. It's far easier to just use a new cape that try to resalvage the old one. I really wish that I could have gone back and waited to mount the original cape. Now, several years and dozens of mounts later, my taxidermy skills have improved greatly so I decided to redo the mount from scratch. I was very picky with selecting my replacement cape making certain that the color patterns matched as well as the season of kill...

If you shoot a nice buck, I'll gladly mount it for you! I'm getting ready to remount my biggest bow deer for '15. The skullplate had a fracture so I pulled the rack off to fix it and now I am going to redo the whole thing. I found a gorgeous late September cape for it...should turn out pretty nice.

This guy was rumored to have made it through season, no pics of him today but I'm 95% sure that I saw him out there through binos last night...

Put a few cams out last week at my #1 spot, checked them this morning to make sure everything was functioning properly and discovered a few decent bucks already... Was very pleased to see that this wide, dark faced buck was still alive. His sheds were picked up on the neighboring property on December 2 last year and I was worried that me may not have survived the winter. I'm excited to see what he does this year as a 5 yr old. This is my 4th year of getting this guy on cam... Last year: Few more. Lots of growing to do over the next 8 weeks!!!

I butcher my own deer, a good sized doe yields 40-45# of meat depending on where it was shot. Although, those fabled 200# dressed does may give you a little more...;).

It currently costs my twice that amount in associated supply costs to mount my own ($110 alone to get a cape tanned)...lol

PM sent

Thanks. No, I'd guess 3.5 for both. I have a shed from the gun buck from the previous year that's definitely a 2.5 shed.

I'm finally wrapping things up for the season in the taxidermy shop. Put the finishing touches on my regular season buck today. Three more heads to mount and I get a break for a few months! Both bucks from last fall...

Old school guys typically like the traditional ears forward look but the halfback ear pose is the most popular.

The cape was definately in rough shape.

He tossed in into the dumpster.

Remount of a beautiful Steuben County buck that I just finished for a good friend of mine. Looks a little better now than the original mount from back in 2003!!!