Saturday, May 30, 2009

An Overview of Taxidermy For Hunters

By Jeff Henderson

Taxidermy is a highly augmented practice, particularly when the deceased animal is used as a wall mount, and it appears to be in rejected in todays culture. Still, most taxidermy business is made by common hunters, even though many taxidermists arrange animals for zoological, restaurants, and museums displays. In order to be a taxidermist, you have to get an education in the fields of painting and sculpture, anatomy and dissection, , and tanning.

Since the process of taxidermy depends on having a hard structure with which to work, the practice is usually restricted to animals with backbones.

Since the turn of the century, taxidermy has developed as a art form and science. Because the goal is to conserve the life likeness of an animal, taxidermists constantly seeking to advance their proficiency and practices, and hi-tech advances have added greatly to the line of work. If you are a sportsman and want to have your prize mounted, you need to know how to arrange your animal properly to make sure your taxidermist can accomplish the most life like dealing possible.

A frequent technique taxidermists use is freezing the animal. Using a huge freezer, like to that used by meat store, they chill the animal remains completely. Once a solid freeze is acomplished, the skin is taken off and set aside to be tanned later on. The animal's bone, muscle, and tissue are then sealed with plaster of Paris, creating a cast of the animal from which a form carving is made. The skin is tanned and then placed back on, and other elements like eye made from glass and fake teeth are added to create a life like Look.

A form of taxidermy that was famous in the Victorian times of the ninetieth Century is called anthromorphic. This form, mounted the animals in human clothes and doing human activities.

Hunters take their dead animals to taxidermists in order to conserve that moment of splendor when they killed the animal. One thing that is true about most game hunters, they use the meat for food and save the fur and skin for mounts. Another popular approach is to have a part of the body, like the head, mounted for display.

The conventional idea of the "Hunter" made popular by Hollywood makes this profession look barbaric and scary, but you must realize that taxidermists are professional, and what they do is a art form and a science. - 16887

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