For the last few seasons, we all have been processing our mounts in the absolute easiest way possible. We have been chucking them in the pond with a piece of paracord tied to the antlers. We pull them out in about June and let the skulls bake in the Sun until August. The result is a perfect skull. The only problem is that the skull and antlers both get a dark brown stain. I am not saying that is necessarily bad, but it does not have that classic look. Moose invented this method a couple of years ago after he and Angus discovered a dead buck moldering in the creek down in Hootin’ Holler. It was decayed just to the point that nobody wanted to touch it. Chucking it in the pond seemed to be a no-muss, no-fuss solution.

The buck I took back in November had a lot of character in the antlers. He had been doing a lot of rutting around, and it showed. I wanted to preserve that as much as possible. Dunking in the pond was going to obscure it. I, therefore, resolved to give the classic European Mount treatment a try and bury it. I had the head rolling around in the back of the truck for over a week before I made it home. You could definitely tell something was dead back there.

I dug a hole in the backyard, stuck the head in, and covered it back up all the way to the pedicles. I then put a plastic garbage can over the antlers and a concrete block on top of that to hold it down. I plan to dig it up after Turkey Season and see how it went. This matches the method used in a bunch of Youtube videos I watched.

It is still a little gnarly, I know, but it shows promise. I still have not had time to mount the buck from 2020– yet another project that got backed up due to the surgery. You can see what a trip to the bottom of the pond did to it. It makes for a rustic presentation to be sure. I am investigating how to bleach it. Here is a hint for those of you who want to try the Toss-in-the-Pond method: go to the dollar store and buy one of those cheap mesh laundry bags and stick the deer head in that before tossing. It will keep all the teeth and what-not. The nice thing about dunking or burying is that you do not have to remove anything. Even before all this, I was having to boil the skull cap for an hour before it was ready for the wall. This lets the worms do all the heavy lifting.

How do I plan on mounting it? First off, I found a place selling blank wooden awarded plaques, HHWeb.com. I bought a dozen of these several years ago. They were much cheaper than buying a kit.

I have been previously just sawing off the top of the skull cap and screwing them to the board. However, for these mounts, I dug around on eBay and found an inexpensive solution that should do the trick. These are “Highwild European Mount Skull Wall Hanger Hook Deer Antelope Antler Style- 20lb.” I bought a six-pack.

I can just screw these to the board and then hang the skull off of that.

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