Skull mount preparation - rotting

Boghossian

Well-Known Member
Hi - so far I have been boiling off trophy heads in the normal fashion. Has anyone experimented with letting the meat simply rot off? Was it possible to de-grease/bleach the bone enough to achieve the same white finish as the traditional method?
 
i have had the best results by boiling them the traditional way ,then bleaching with hydrogen peroxide,never had a good result by rotting off then trying to bleach,also the antlers themselves can loose colour if left too long or forgoton about, regards arron.
 
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Hi - so far I have been boiling off trophy heads in the normal fashion. Has anyone experimented with letting the meat simply rot off? Was it possible to de-grease/bleach the bone enough to achieve the same white finish as the traditional method?

No, always get a dirty look to them and a waste of a good head.
 
yanks seem to like to bury there heads and leave them for best part of a year or leave them in a bowl of maggots etc i dont see the point in waiting boil is the fastest and best way and far less spell
 
Don't do it, lazy way of doing it, all the connective tissue which holds the bones together rots away and the skull rattles, you need to glue everything back together.
You will never whiten them up as good as you can with boiling and bleaching.

Moose
 
Boil them. I tried the maggot method a couple of years back. All the meat was gone sure but the bone was left off colour even after bleaching.

The other issue I had was I scratched my finger on a sharp edge of bone while retrieving a head from the bucket. It went through my latex gloves and within a week my hand had swollen and purple lines were tracking across my hand and fingers. Cost me nearly £30 in antibiotics.
 
any lesser heads I just bury, dig them up a year later,
But they are stained brownish,and difficult to bleach
foxe s often dig them up too, also put them in the compost heap but that can attract rats.

so if youve got a good head then it really needs boiling and bleaching
 
I tried it once to see the difference. Yep it was different, reeked, couldn't really get the smell off the bone, a yellow tink to skull that wouldn't bleach out, yuk.
 
I bury mine unless its a trophy - you can peroxide after and get the same finish, though I have found teeth and nasal bones fall out sometimes.

if its nice you're best boiling it
 
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