Found a skull ...now what?

Someday isle

Someday isle

5 year old buck +
IMG_0780.JPG I posted this picture on the "who's working in the woods this weekend" thread but thought it deserved its own discussion.

My son found this deer skull in our woods today. He wants to do a European mount with it. It's pretty sun bleached. Any suggestions on how to prepare it and whether or not it might be too far gone? I imagine it's been there a year or more. You can see how pale the antlers are. The antlers seem quite solid yet although they are very bleached. I wondered about those iron skull kits you can buy online.

Anyone have experience trying to do this?
 
Hang it up!

I hang those I find on my place out on the face of one of my buildings......skulls are found deer, skull caps are deer I have harvested. The skulls I run a small piece of wire thru to make a hanger and then use a wood screw to hang. I have started hanging my skull caps from deer that I have not gotten shoulder mounts of as well. I have several yearlings that I need to hang that I took earlier in my hunting career but I have not gotten that far yet. Skull caps I drill 2 small clearance holes in and then run 2 wood screws thru them as well.

barn.jpg
 
I agree with j-bird. Hang it up as is.
 
You might want to touch base with Duffy. He could claim it, shoulder mount it and hang it in the lodge.


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No matter what it was a good find. He's still a new hunter and has been trying hard to find a shed. This was really fun for him. He had just walked up on a bedded doe too and saw her for several minutes before she got uncomfortable and wandered off. That made a couple firsts for him today. I don't have an old barn or a cabin to hang it up. I think I might recondition the antlers a little and do some kind of a skull mount for him and we'll hang it down in the reloading room with some of my old mounts.
 
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Use coffee grounds to stain the antlers and leave the skull alone.
 
The skull looks really clean already. Buy peroxide cream from a beauty salon supply and coat the skull. Really whitens. I have gone from shoulder mounts to European due to cost.20170317_085833.jpg
 
I do European skull mounts and will second the peroxide suggestion. If you really do not like the head part, you can cut off the antlers and mount them to a plastic replica skull.
As for me, I would leave it as is and proudly hang it up on a wall. You can get various plaques online from such places as fleabay to put the skull on for display. My most recent European skull mount went up on a cedar plaque that cost me $30. It has a flat back piece for wall or table mounting and the front piece is angled at about 30 degrees to prominently display the entire skull with antlers. I put a jaw bone and the arrow or shell casing used to take the buck on the plaque also. IMHO, they look great and are an inexpensive mounting solution compared to shoulder mounts done by taxidermists. Plus, I don't have to wait many months to a year or more for my mount to be returned to me. The 10 point buck I shot in late December is already done.
 
I would just spray it good with permethrin and hang it up "as is".
Cool find congrats to your son.
 
I would clean the dirt and bugs off of it and then nail a long nail in the wall and stick the head of the nail in the brain stem hole. As simple as it gets.
 
FYI, if it's a MO deadhead, call your Conservation Agent and get a permit to make it legal, if you haven't already.
 
swat1018, can you explain why you need a MO permit to keep this skull? In my mind, it is just the same as finding a pair of shed antlers except is happens to have the head attached. Is there some question as to if it was taken legally? Just curious.
 
Yes swat - please clarify that for me. I assumed it's the same as a shed myself.
 
Ohio is the same way. If you find one your supposed to call a CO and get a permit for it, they are pretty good about it unless it's a big one or locked racks then they want to see where you picked it up...the bigger the rack the more fuss they make over it.
We have the call in tagging system here for hunting and they are trying to make sure it isn't a poached deer that someone said they just picked up. Illegal here to have a rack attached to skull without some type of tag.
 
Someday isle said:
Yes swat - please clarify that for me. I assumed it's the same as a shed myself.
Click to expand...

Because it's the law in MO. Not that I necessarily agree with it, but it's true.

"Any person who finds a dead deer with antlers still attached to the skull plate may take the antlers, but must report the find to a conservation agent within 24 hours to receive authorization to possess the antlers."
 
Thanks!
 
Yikes!
I've got a paddock with a head on just about every fence post. Picked most of them up the first few year after I bought the place. Most are old, Really old.

Game warden stops by to visit almost every fall. And MDC is their third year of trapping and tagging turkeys on me.
Nobody ever said anything. But there are no "good" ones on a post.

I guess all it would take is new guy looking to make a name.
 
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