The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-08-06
THE HUNTER TAXIDERMIST.
The Mounted Mallard Brings Back the
 Thoughts of the Lake.

The Mounted Mallard Brings Back the
 Thoughts of the Lake.
 The sportsman who joins some knowl- edge of taxiderny to His gun and rod expertness has a valuable arrow in his culver. says the New York Sun. It is worth a great deal to man to be able to mount artisticallye the prize speci- mems which he takes Himself, and even a passing acquaintance with taxidermy will teach him good8deal about nature which would be by Him otherwise un- learned.
 It is a difficult art to master, but it's rudiments are easily acquired, and the rudiments will enable man to do work which is pleasing to himself and friends. The person able to preserve and mount with wings and beaks outspread half dozen humming birds on single flower stem is a taxidermist. but there is a great difference between mounting humming birds and mounting mallards or bass.
 Anyone of intelligence and applica- ton can learn enough in week to make a passable attempt at putting up such large objects as ducks or fish, which will add greatly to the looks of dining room or library, besides having strangely peasant associations.
 If a man has a canvasback above his sideboard he cannot ook at it years af- ter without being carried back to the lake and early morning of long ago. when the gray clouds hung low and the wind clicked in the rushes. It is hard to see a bass and the fights that landed him, the surge and dash through the water, the strain on the rod and wrist, the useless pltniful advice of the guide and the thrill which came when the great warrior lay gasping on the boats bottom.
 A simple preparation of arsenic to be had of any druggist will, if placed in the kit before the town is left, serve to keep sound the skins of any fish, bird or animal taken during any outing, and they may be mounted at leisure of win ter evenings, affording an absorbing pursuit when theatres and other social entertainments fail of attraction. Many anglers have learned to make passable rods as a means of spending the early hours of winter nights. The bamboo strips, or lancewood, or green heart sections may be had in the rough from the factories and putting them together, wrapping them, shel- lacking them and givng them the prop CT weight and balance afford a good way of killing time, but the making of rods is a limited amusement compared with taxidermy, though there are many privately made rods in use In America whose owners value them as high as $100, and they are worth the money. If a man care to take the wires with him to be used in making the frames for his specimens he may pass many rainy hours in camp or at the hotel putting up his specimens
 The most difficult thing about taxi dermy is not the mounting, as inex- perienced folks believe, but the skin ming Once the skin. bearing scales or feathers, has been properly removed, the soft parts taken from the head. the bones from the legs and the whole care- fully cured putting it into shape of the living animal and inserting the eyes is comparatively easy.
 With the wire rough model is made, the skin stretched over it and filling in- serted to bring the skin into proper roundness. This has reference only to plain taxidermy Of course there is more art in so shaping the specimen that it will seem to be alive, and that will come with time,