It'll look very unnatural if you do that.I’ve got a buffalo head skull mount and I’d like to treat the horn to give it a nice black lustre.
Any tips on what to use? Thinking something like Lindseed oil?
Thanks
Keen not to use varnishI think you'll find the colours just need bringing out rather put in. I'd rub the horns down with fine wire wool until all smooth and then use a clear varnish. It works with Cattle horns.
What do you recommend? Maybe nothing?It'll look very unnatural if you do that.
Well I was just thinking of that Guy Wallace documentary "End of the Game". If you haven't watched it, you should. There's a link to it on here somewhere. Anyway, to cut a long story short, eccentric Wallace, a man from an earlier era, goes in his old age to Africa on his last hunt, for a buffalo. At the very end, back in England, he receives shipment of his trophy. He expresses disappointment that the horns have been blackened, as all the crusty character of the old beast as he was in life has been lost, and I know exactly what he meant. The head was no longer a true representation of the hunt and the beast that he shot.What do you recommend? Maybe nothing?
I take it you owed him money?
I take it you owed him money?
Just a small "Home Counties" version of that feeling..The head was no longer a true representation of the hunt and the beast that he shot.

Just a small "Home Counties" version of that feeling.
I had seen a nice Roe Buck on our ground.
I had seen him, off and on, for about three years. Last year, I saw that he had something tangled in his antlers.
On one particular outing, I was 'on plot' very early, anticipating where I thought he might appear.
Just after first light, he did so - with about four Does. He was 300 yards away.
Long short.
I crawled in to about 180 yards (a long way for me on quarry) and managed to take him.
A pal of mine boils out deer heads, and I asked him to leave whatever it was that was tangled, in his antlers.
That Buck now lives in my bedroom, and whenever I look at him, I remember every moment of our times together.
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Well I was just thinking of that Guy Wallace documentary "End of the Game". If you haven't watched it, you should. There's a link to it on here somewhere. Anyway, to cut a long story short, eccentric Wallace, a man from an earlier era, goes in his old age to Africa on his last hunt, for a buffalo. At the very end, back in England, he receives shipment of his trophy. He expresses disappointment that the horns have been blackened, as all the crusty character of the old beast as he was in life has been lost, and I know exactly what he meant. The head was no longer a true representation of the hunt and the beast that he shot.
Thanks for posting that.![]()
Guy Wallace, buccaneer of the hunting world, gundog trainer and old Africa hand who lived ‘off-grid’ in a caravan – obituary
Despite stabs at conformity, Wallace was, in the words of his favourite poet Robert Service, one of ‘The Men That Don’t Fit In’www.telegraph.co.uk