How do you get flesh off a deer skull?

[AJMD429]

We didn't have the spare cash at the time to get my son's first buck professionally mounted, but a friend advised us to do a "Texas Mount" which he described as the skull and antlers on a plaque. My son was ok with that, so we asked how to do it. The answer was "just hang it out where varmints can't get it, and let the SUN do the rest..."

OK, so we hung it in a beech tree near the house all winter, and the eyes, and it appears much of the brain matter, is gone (...we'll run it as a presidential candidate! ). However, the skin is on it, and I'll bet some internal tissue as well, despite six months of bugs, rain, and woodpeckers.

Now what...?

Soak it? (in what?)
Skin it? (how do you skin a SKULL?)
Cut the top of the skull off now already?

A friend suggested 'bury it and let the maggots do the rest' but I'd fear the antlers would get eaten by rodents. Should we just give it more time in the summer sun to come?

Any suggestions appreciated; we want to do it justice, even if we didn't do the whole taxidermy thing...

[Coldfingers]

The European (or "Texas") mount is, in my book, rather attrictive.

You have to get most of the big chunks off before the small bugs,/birds can do much cleaning in any reasonable amount of time.

I usually boil the skull good, (after skinning) then use a scalpel (or small bladed pocket knife) and an assortemtent of crochet hooks (hope my wife aint reading ) to get inside the skull and nasal passages and such.

A good anthill would do a final cleanup but rodents, stray dogs, other varmints would be a great danger.

Skin/pry that old hide off there and hang it back up in a tree.

Scotty.

(final whitenting can be done with a peroxide solution or bleach. Be carefull not to boil too long as you may loosten the teeth)

[Leverdude]

Might be nasty now but I skined mine & then boiled it till the meat & stuff was falling off. The brain I needed to cut a little above where the skull sits on the last vertabra a little to open the hole & dig it out. After most was off I scrubbed it with a wire brush.

The next one I had a buddy do with them meat eating beatles. I just skinned it & dropped it off. If possible I recomend doing it with the bugs. Much neater & nicer job.

[horsesoldier03]

The best way that I have seen to clean a skull is to set it out in a remote area and let nature clean it up. IE maggots. Back home I have an old cage area that we used to keep chickens in. That keeps a dog or any other varmint from carrying it off. Clean as much off of it as you can and then let nature do the rest.

[YellowHorse]

The best way that I have seen to clean a skull is to set it out in a remote area and let nature clean it up. IE maggots. Back home I have an old cage area that we used to keep chickens in. That keeps a dog or any other varmint from carrying it off. Clean as much off of it as you can and then let nature do the rest.

+1
I've cleaned up a goat's scull by leaving it in an area with chickens. The chickens, ants, magots do a really great job

[Kismet]

My buddy did this with his moose - it looks great. He took a large barrel and cut grooves for the antlers to rest in holding the skull just under the water level. Fill the barrel, boil over a fire, and voila - clean skull.

Michael in NH

[Grizz]

if you're around tidewater put it overboard in a shrimp pot. nothing will detail clean quicker than those little bugs

ps: you can skin a skull, it's an art called caping and you can get some diagrams searching for it.

what we did was to use a recip saw and cut off the skull cap with the hair on it and mount that to a board. My sense of smell isn't too refined so I couldn't say if it's an indoor mount. you see a lot of those on old hunting barn photos.

[Aussie Chris]

Just boil it in a big pot. Make sure you dont burn the coronets of the antlers though. It will smell the house out a little but you get that with the big jobs! I did it with my sambar skull and it worked great. Looks even better after bleaching it.

[shawn_c992001]

Mine was skinned, and the majority of the meat cut away with a knife (careful not to scratch the skull). Boil it until the meat pulls away from the bone. Let it cool and pull the meat away, a nylon bristled scrub brush helps too. The eyes, tongue, and palate simply pull off, the brain is removed with a clothes hanger with a small hook bent into it. A water hose or a pressure washer helps too. The nasal tissue can be pushed out with an arrow shaft.

After all that fill the pot with clean water and pour in one large bottle of hydrogen peroxide and bring to a boil with the skull in it. (Be sure to wrap the bases with aluminum foil to prevent them from being discolored.)
WATCH the skull, because the peroxide will eat away the small bones around the nose and eyes. After around an hour rinse and let dry.

All this can be done in about one day while watching the race or the football game.

[DerekR]

Nice buck your boy got! I'd try to not leave it in the elements too long or it will weather the rack as well. I'd take a knife and a pair of pliers and try to get the rest of the skin off. It might be some work, but is doable. I had more trouble with the lower jaw than anything. When you get the first vertabrae off of the skull you will have a hole into the brain cavity. I packed the cavity with borax and leave ot overnight. Then I would take a flat point screwdriver and scoop out as much brain matter as I could. I did this over and over until I got all of the brain out. I then boiled the skull in water with a little dishwashing liquid for about an hour. I tried to keep the rack out of the water. That softened the remaining cartilage and I then scraped it with a dull pocket knife. As a last step I put the skull in a shallow pan and got to large bottles of peroxide from Walmart. I'd keep the peroxide off of the rack also. In a few days it was as white as snow. I have decided I prefer to do it myself and I prefer the skull mount to a full mount.

[shooter]

Boiling is good, and so is leaving it for the bugs. You can also use borax for the skin and meat and the rest of the stuff that's easily accessable. I don't know how well the borax would work for the brain.

[kooz]

Send it to someone in Texas and they can set it on a fire ant hill for a day or two and it will be spotless.

[Elkhunter1]

Boil it in water and dishsoap to get the grease out of the skull. Pick and scrape along the way, plan on spending a good portion of the day. Also might wish to boil outside on a camp stove in an old kettle as it tends to smell.

After it's clean here's the trick, wrap the skull in paper towel and liberally soak the tissue with hydrogen peroxide. I shove a crumpled piece inside the eye cavity as well. then I wrap the whole mess sin saran wrap and let it sit for a good week or so. When you take it out of the plastic rinse it off with water and let it sit in the sun to dry.

[nemhed]

After skinning, I've boiled them with powdered borax and hydrogen peroxide in the water. The combo seems to break down the tissue and fat and bleach the bone. There will still be a lot of hands on work as others have described.

[El Chivo]

I didn't have a whole skull, just a cap.

I have a hot air blower that's used for shrink wrapping, it boiled the flesh right off, right down to the bone. Very quick and easy.

They sell the same heat gun for blistering paint. You heat up paint and scrape it right off. You should see one at Walmart.

I tried boiling in water but it seemed to take a long time and was pretty stinky, so I gave that up.

[Iron_Marshal]

Well, the first time I tried this it was trial and error…mostly error. The end result was great, but I would do it differently now. I first hung the head from an old standing bird feeder in the back yard and tried to let the flies take care of the job. My wife son let me know that blue bottle flies swarming around her bird feeders was not the kind of flying creatures she wanted to see in the yard. So…I dug a hole deep enough to bury the head and the antlers, but I didn't bury the antlers because they will discolor. Then I put an old sheet of plywood over the hole and weighted it down with cement blocks to keep the roaming neighborhood dogs out. I left it there several months and the end result was that the beetles, worms, and maggots cleaned out the sinus and brain cavity very efficiently, but there was still a tough skin attached to the outside and it had some other dried mess left on it. I tried to use pliers to clean it but it was completely ineffective. Then I submerged the whole head, up to, but not touching the antlers, in an old bucket. (You will never want to use this bucket for anything ever again.) I set the bucket out back…way out back…in the barn, to keep the odor away from the house. As water evaporated I would add more. Very soon tiny little worms were swimming around in the bucket and after a month or two the whole skull was entirely clean. I bought a strong peroxide mix at the beauty supply store (The store clerk looked at me a little funny until I explained I wanted to whiten a deer skull) but did not use it in the end because I felt the thing was very pretty and more natural like it was.

I researched this pretty thoroughly before I started and some tips I found were:

DO NOT USE BLEACH! I don’t personally know if this will hurt the skull, but the information I read said that bleach will weaken the bones.

Another bit of advice said NOT to BOIL the skull. The desired effect is to clean the skull and whiten it. Boiling the skull melts fatty tissue which embeds itself into the skull, causing it to yellow. Boiling can also loosen the teeth which must then be glued back in place. Did I mention it STINKS when you boil a skull with brain matter in it? If you decide to boil it take the thing OUTSIDE and use an OLD metal container that you don’t mind throwing away when done.

Good Luck!

[rock-steady]

I skin the hide off the skull, and place the skull and antlers in a big fire ant bed near a tree. Then tie the skull to the tree with bob wire. In a month or so, itll be cleaner than a whistle. How far north have fire ants made it? Down h'yar , we got a'plenty. I'll be a'sendin' yall some if'n ye need 'em.

[Elkhunter1]

Please don't send them darn things north or I'll have to move. I got into a batch in Florida two years ago that almost killed me. 2 bites put me into alergic shok and got me trip to the ER and a date with adrenaline. I now have to carry an epi pen when I travel to "Devil" ant country.

[KCSO]

Find a pond crawdads, tie a rope to the antlers and thow it in. Come back a week later and it will be clean.

[Rick Engman]

I usually boil the skull for 3 or 4 hours (not letting the Antlers in the water) then take a high pressure washer and blast most of the meat, fur, brains etc..off. Then soak it in a solution of Hydrogen Peroxide to whiten the skull.
We do 90% of our mounts like this.
Rick

[Gryphon Black]

Thesr's nothing like mother nature to clean a dead animal. Main trick, as you say, is to keep the rodents from chewing the antlers. Some kind of cage or basket that the mice can't chew through will let the bugs go at it. I think it'll work faster on the ground. The shrimp/crawfish/crab idea underwater will be optimum, if you have body of water like that. No mice down there, just carniverus crustaceans! Ants are also fabulous, but rig a cage above ground so the clean-off job is easier. Dirt and mold will discolor the bone, and above ground gives yopu a lot less of that. If there's no shade, I'd cover it with a tarp or something. I think them critters like to be hidden.
And this way it won't stink up your house!

Gryphon

[spencer516]

Contact your local taxidermist and ask for a europeon mount. It will cost you little money. You drop off a rotten deer skull and pick up a fresh and clean skull. It will be money better spent in the long run. Do not put it in a pond if you have tannens in your water. I had to end up painting two customers skulls because he wanted to save the money. Remember, your son will have the memory the rest of his life if the skull is prepared properly.
Take care,
Tom

[RICHP]

If you are not in a hurry, soak the skull in a bucket of water for a couple of days. Then you can skin it off pretty easy. Oh almost forgot nice rack. Richard

[AJMD429]

Thanks for all the information, guys...!

I've printed it out for my son and he'd deciding how he wants to do it.

When done, we'll post pics .

[moxgrove]

http://www.taxidermy.net/suppliers/skull.php dermestid beetles is how museums clean bones

[Slick]

http://www.taxidermy.net/suppliers/skull.php dermestid beetles is how museums clean bones

+ 1 Here's another "do-it-yourself" place to check out->

http://www.skulltaxidermy.com/kits.html

http://www.dermestidbeetlecolonies.com/

[wm]

Local taxidermist does european mounts for about $75....he puts the head in a beetle tank for about week, chemically bleaches it, and then seals. Guaranteed to last.

You might check with some of the local taxidermists or google beetle tank.

Wm