It was mid August and My husband and I decided to go on a hog hunt together. I had hunted hogs before, but this trip was going to be a new experience for me because we were going to use dogs. I had never used Dogs to hunt so I was very excited. A few customers from the taxidermy shop had told James and I many times that they knew of the perfect spot to get some huge wild boar and that they would let us use their dogs. My eagerness dropped by a few points when they told me we were not allowed to shoot the hogs because they were worried we might shoot one of their expensive hunting dogs by mistake.

I asked them what seemed to me a reasonable question Well, how will we kill them? They all laughed and said “you will have to stab them.” My heart dropped in my chest. Stab a WILD hog????? are these men crazy? I thought to myself. I looked around at the 4 men standing in my shop (one which was my husband) and I quickly answered my own question. Yes they all were crazy.

My husband arranged for the hunt to take place that upcoming weekend. I was excited but very nervous. I know I can shoot….. But I had never stabbed an animal before especially one as dangerous as a wild boar. Over the next few days all the stories the hunters had told me in our meat processing plant kept replaying in my mind. They had always boasted how dangerous they were and how they got knocked down or charged by them. I always just laughed at the stories but never paid them any mind. I never thought I would be putting myself in a position that one could get close enough to hurt me without the security of my trusty AR 223 in my hands.

The morning of the hunt arrived and as usual I didn’t get a good nights sleep. My husband could tell I was a little uneasy so he told me,” honey, you know I wont ever put you in a position that I cant save you. Just relax and have a good time. This hunt is for you. ” So I took a deep breath and decided at that moment I was going to stop worrying and start having a blast. We left the house at 5:30 am and headed to the Waffle House (a tradition we started back when we were dating). After a good breakfast and 3 pots of morning Joe we headed to the guides house. Once we all got there he loaded up the dogs.

Now let me take a second to say these dogs were not what I was expecting. I was thinking they would be huge muscle dogs like a bull mastiff or something. The dogs consisted of three small pittbull dogs none weighing more than 45 lbs and a loud yelping schnauzer mix. I leaned over and whispered to my husband,” Are these the kind of dogs most people use on these kind of hunts?” That real sick feeling washed over me again when his reply was,” UMM honey I am really not sure.”

We all loaded up and headed off for the “secret” spot. When we all arrived I was super anxious. The guide let his four pitiful dogs out and off they went through the woods just a barking. My heart went to raceing when the guide hollered,”Grab your killing knife they got one!” I grabbed my knife and my husband and I went running through the woods in pursuit of barking dogs. The whole way there I was getting so scared. All the what if’s were running through my mind. It seemed like I had been running for miles when my husband slowed and finally stopped in front of me. I jumped up front to see my trophy……..

It was a tiny piglet. I couldn’t help but laugh. It was no bigger than a house cat. I had gotten so worked up over this baby pig. We decided to load up and try another “hot spot” I had calmed down a lot bye  this time, and was looking forward to the dogs tracking down the next one.

We arrived at the new location and the dogs were set loose. They just wandered off this time and I was quiet for a little bit. Then all of a sudden you heard the dogs barking and carrying on. Once again the guide instructed me to “grab my killing knife” and we took off through the woods after them. When we got to the dogs I bout had a panic attack. I saw three dogs holding down the biggest darn pig I had ever seen in my life. One dog had it by the nose, one by the ear and one by the back leg. I will never forget the sound of the pigs tusks clamping down and the god awful screaming it made.The guide, my husband, and the two tag along men started all screaming at me to stab it. I was frozen in place I asked my husband if I could tape my knife to the end of a stick he laughed and said hell no.

They all were screaming, the dogs were barking and growling, the wild boar was screaming, and most of all my heart was pounding. I finally took a deep breath and ran up to the only thing I have ever known to be scared of and went to stabbing. I stabbed the pig three or four times but all It did was make the pig mad even more. My husband went to yelling, “HERE!! STAB IT HERE! STAB IT HERE BEFORE IT KILLS ONE OF THE DOGS!!!!”

I took a deep breath and gave the hardest stab I could. I thought for a second I must have been screaming while I was stabbing, but then I realized it was not me screaming…. but my husband!

He screamed “WHAT ARE YOU DOING???” I screamed back,” I am stabbing the pig”  He hollered back,

“I THINK YOU STABBED ME!”

I looked down and to my horror.. I had indeed stabbed my husband through the middle of his hand with my “killing knife”. It had pinned his hand to the wild boar. I snatched the knife back out before I had time to think if that was the right thing to do. There was so much blood. I couldn’t tell If it was coming from him or the pig. He took off his shirt and wrapped it around his hand. I had seriously wounded both my husband and the pig. The guide told me to stab the wild boar one more time, but to be sure to miss my husband. I did just that and finally everything got real quiet.

I thought my husband was going to be really mad but to my surprise he was excited at my kill and told me I had done a great job. My trophy pig weighed in at 389 pounds. My husbands stitches counted in at 43. Now that’s a hunting trip My husband and I will never forget.

Now I know most of you are thinking “umm that’s the taxidermist job”. and you are very right. However a lot of it starts with you. There are several things you can do to help ensure that your mount looks its best. Today I want to cover Birds.

Birds are the hardest animal to taxidermy in my opinion. They take great skill and patience to mount. The mounting is a LOT easier if the hunter has taken the proper pre steps before bringing it to us.The first thing to remember is the number one rule with any animal you want to have mounted ” FREEZE ” it as soon as possible. The longer you let that animal set out in the sun the smaller time window I have to work on it.

Bacteria begins to build up on the skin pretty much as soon as the blood stops flowing and bacteria is what makes a body rot.  If you cant freeze them due to the fact your not done hunting yet at least have a cooler full of ice just for the birds to put them in. If its a turkey please put it in a bag first we don’t want to get it wet.

The next thing you want to remember is if the bird is not a water fowl don’t let it soak in a cooler full of melted ice, bag it first to keep it dry. Turkeys floating in a cooler full of bloody water is not a good thing. Its very hard to get those feathers clean and fluffed back out.

Now once you are ready to freeze the bird the best thing to do is wrap a few paper towels around the body and head to soak up any blood that may seep out while freezing or thawing out. Once you have it wrapped slide a nylon stocking over the birds head first and down towards the tail, going with the feathers.

If the bird is a pheasant you will want to take an empty paper towel roll and slide it over the tail feathers to ensure they do not get broken.. once the bird has been wrapped and the stocking put on. Place it in a zip lock bag or garbage bag and freeze it.

Always remember  the more bags the better.

I also want you to know that sometimes the birds have dozens of holes in the skin from pellets or dogs getting a better grip on the bird. These holes are a big problem with birds. Its always a good idea to have a few birds for your taxidermist to choose from. This will insure the best looking mount..

The great thing to remember is I am a Taxidermist not a magician. If you shoot it in the head, pump it full of bullet holes, or let  the retrieving dog turn it into a sifter its gonna be a huge job to make it look good. So a quick over view.

Freeze or put on ice A.S.A.P

Keep non water fowl out of melted ice water

Wrap bird in a few paper towels

Slip into nylon stocking

Place into a few bags

Freeze

Have a few extra birds for your taxidermist to choose from.

If you do these things and your Taxidermist knows what he or she is doing, you will have a BEAUTIFUL bird mount.

Around 3 o’clock in the afternoon a customer came in the shop to check out our work and ask a few questions.; My husband was chatting with him as I was diligently working (I mean fighting) with skinning out a water logged turkey. It was hot and I was pretty nasty at this point so I let him handle the customer. The man was inquiring about his options on a turkey mount and he mentioned that he would love to have a whole body mount done but his wife was ” TOTALLY” grossed out about animals, hunting, and yes…taxidermy work. He even went on to tell us that she was out in the car because she refused to come inside.

My husband decided he would take a bash at using his good southern charm to coax her into coming inside to help ease her mind about the taxidermy business. He just wanted to help the poor guy out. I truly thought my husband was wasting his time when low and behold.. here she came, walking in like at any moment one of the animals might jump off the wall and eat her. My husband talked to her for a bit and slowly you could see she was beginning to relax.

Mean while I am still fighting.. I mean working on the darn turkey. As I am finishing it up the lady gets curious and ask me what I was working on. I tell her I’m skinning out a turkey. She walks over and stands right next to me like I might save her if the bird were to try to hurt her. I take one of my tools to pop the eye out of the socket, and to my surprise she leans over to get a better look. It was hard to believe but that lady was no more than a foot or so away from the head of the bird. You could tell she was interested, but scared to death all at the same time.

When I went to pull the eyeball out of the bird to my horror…. ” eyeball juice squirted out and landed across her face and in her hair, ” and on her white North Face  pullover. I just gasped, and wanted to see what her reaction was going to be. I thought she would laugh I would get her a clean towel and that would be it. I mean that’s how I would have handled it.

Well her eyes got as big as half dollars.. her head turned white as a paper towel and she let out this God scream. She went on screaming over and over as though someone was being hacked into little pieces in front of her. I ran around the table to help and comfort her..(trying my darned hardest not to bust out laughing).

When I reached her she shoved me away and screamed…..

” LOOK AT WHAT YOU HAVE DONE  TO ME! ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME? I THINK I AM GOING TO DIE!”

I calmly told the woman I meant her no harm and that eyeball juice could not kill her. I even added in a little joke that eyeball juice was good for your hair. WOW was that a huge mistake. She flew into a rage that it was in her hair. Screaming over and over to get it out that it was burning. My husband and her husband are just standing there with their mouths open watching me trying to get this woman under control.

She would not let me help or touch her. She really thought I did it on purpose. Well as each second passes she is getting more and more upset. Finally she begins to hyperventilate. I beg her to sit down and let me get her a glass of water but she acts like I am going to put eyeball juice in the glass.

People this woman has went completely bonkers. She tells her husband that she is getting light headed and that she thinks she is having a panic attack. Her husband calls 911 and an ambulance picks her up from my shop about 15 minutes later. Her husband apologizes as he is getting into his BMW and speeds off after the ambulance. My husband and I are dumbfounded. We couldn’t comprehend what just happened.

I mean one minute we are working, the next a lady is sprayed with eyeball juice- has a panic attack, and leaves our shop in an ambulance.

“Dude that one heck of a day.”

Well about 2 days later I sent the lady a card in the mail hoping she was alright and telling her how sorry I was. About 3 days after that I got a letter from the Better Business Bruea stating that our business had personally attacked this lady with eyeball juice causing her to have a panic attack and that if we did not pay her medical bills she would take us to court stating that we had caused her humiliation and pain and suffering.

The (BBB) closed the complaint. She never took us to court. And I hate to say I think I have lost all of this guys future business. I laugh every time I think about this story and I hope It made you laugh too.

Note to taxidermist… when a customer is hovering over you be careful of what you do.

Some people bring their fish in a block of ice, or wrapped in foil and already frozen.  All of these tips are nothing more than “fish tails”.  Wrapping a fish in a towel or newspaper is the very worst thing you can do. Also leaving your trophy out in the sun can be very bad for it.

Wrapping a towel or a newspaper will suck all the moisture and slime out of the scales of a fish such as bass, bream, and crappie. So when I mount the fish all the scales tend to stand up like a porcupine. We would like for the fish to be nice and slimy when we defrost it. This will allow us to make your trophy better looking and it will also be easier on us to deal with.

If you follow this very simple  step your fish will be fine stored  in the freezer for more than a year compared to a month with these other methods. Are you ready……… is the suspense killing you……. All you need to do is……..

Wrap it in several garbage bags, tie them up and pop it in the freezer. ”  Yes that’s it! ”  Your Taxidermist will be so thrilled not having to fight to save your once in a life time catch!

I hope this has been helpful and If you have any more questions you need answered about hunting and taxidermy my husband and I would love to hear from you.

Jennifer Cureton

Buckhead Taxidermy and meat processing.

978 54th street, Columbus, Georgia 31904

(706) 323-9500

buckhead_taxidermy@yahoo.com 0r check me out on face book!