I gotta question for you guys who preserve your velvet horns - especially those who hunt early season, when it's still pretty warm out. I've only done this myself once before and had pretty good luck. I sawed off the horns in the field. When I got back to town, I froze them and order up some velvet preservative through a Taxidery supply shop. I thawed out the horns and tried following the directions. They said to inject the solution with a syringe under the velvet. This didn't work too good. So it just saturated the entire horn mass several time and finally let the whole thing dry out. I know for some animal horns (e.g. Caribou) they just soak the whole thing in a 55 gal drum of the solution.

Anyone tried preserving themselves? One problem I had was with matting of the velvet "hairs." They tended to matt down in areas. I tried a toothbrush to revive them, but not too well. Just looking for any tips from others so when I get a real nice one, I'll have it down pat.

MM

I have a set of MD horns from late last summer, road kill. I just cut them off and hung them in the garage rafters, sprayed them with some raid to keep the bugs off. They are very nice now and all the velvet stayed on.