Now don't laugh ... Shooting 'hogs 20 years ago it occured to me that since the groundhog was my game animal - I should have one stuffed. :-) A "trophy" don't you know?

Well, I got a beautiful, young female adult one day. Probably 4 pounds or a little better. A real nice coat, no mange spots that so many have. Really nice looking chompers, too.

Rem700 BDL-V in .22-250 ... Sierra bthp, as I remember ... 80 yards probably. A .224" hole in her chest with no exit. Zero carnage, no blood. I'd found my trophy! I've actually got a picture of her dead in the car junk yard where she lived and died, but I haven't seen it in ages.

So, instead of gutting her for my pal ...

who always took my little ones IF I did the butchering - he was squeamish that way. (Go figure) BTW ... he BBQ'd them mostly - had a tasty Crock Pot recipe too ...

... I packed her into my field lunch bucket and took her home to the freezer.

Wife: "What's that"?

Me: A Groundhog.

Wife: (eyes narrowing) "Why are you putting it in the freezer?"

Me: Gonna get 'er stuffed. Gotta preserve her.

Wife: [Pitch goes up] "Errrr where ya gonna set it?"

Me: On top of the living room TV. (I meant that, BTW)

Wife: (faints dead away)

True story.

Okay. She didn't faint. She kinda swooned and rolled her eyes.

Anyway, to make a short story long I talked to some deer hunters at work and got laughed at quite a bit. Hee Hee.

I did get one guy to take me seriously, though. He knew a guy fairly new to taxidermy that he thought might enjoy the challenge. Him being kinda new and kinda inexperienced - no one would trust him with a 12 point buck noggin' - was what was lurking in the conversations undercurrent. But I figured that - even to me - a groundhog is still just a groundhog so I said he's my guy.

So I carried "Betsy" into work one day in her Coleman sarcophagus (Yes. I did have to peek in Webster's to spell that)

So off she went at quitting time with my friend. Time went by. I inquired of my workmate occasionally but eventually I kinda lost interest.

Probably three months in, my bud comes to me and says that he has an update on Betsy's transformation into a TV sentinel.

Seems the rookie taxidermist guy was having a rough time finding the form. Not a big call for Groundhog forms I reasoned and said I was glad the project was at least still kicking.

Well. Months went by. So many months that I'd quit the shooting sports and was spending time and money at a horrific rate trying to win kart races. So the project died a quiet death. Betsy probably got unceremoniously dumped in a can.

End of story.

Hey! Know anyone with a stuffed Groundhog?

The desire to type this post preceded any thought of Internet research into this. Twenty some years ago stuffing groundhogs was a eccentric thing to consider, at best. Nowadays though? I bet you can get it done with not so much as a snicker being uttered in your direction.

So. Know any taxidermists with 'hog experience that will perform the deed in a timely manner? I'd still like to have one for my TV.

Hee Hee.

I just saw the Taxidermy Forum here!

Hey there BC,

I do in fact know a fella with a stuffed groundhog...I call him Dad!

When he was in college some 35 years back, he and a couple good buddies used to shoot a ton of groundhogs out of the strip pits of Southern Illinois. One day a few years ago, one of those buddies gave him a stuffed groundhog as a present! Real nice mount...standing up. Dad added some fake bean sprouts and if it aint the dang-dest looking mount you ever did see, you don't know the true pleasure a groundhog can give! He named him "Don Diego Da-Ba-Har"! Don after his buddy, Diego after the cigar, and Da-Ba-Har after a character in John Wayne's "The Alamo". Right now, Don is sitting on a end table next to the T.V.

Dad and I went groundhog hunting a few times over the years I was growing up, but the coyote population exploded and the groundhog population became almost non-existant, so I never got to experience the way it was in the old days. But when I moved out west, one of my main goals was to get into some rock chucks, a cousin of the groundhog. Now that I am out here, I am learning the trade of rock chuck hunter and getting to experience a little bit of my own kind of groundhog hunting!

There is a bar in Sidney, NY that has a stuffed woodchuck head mounted on a plaque. It also has a short piece of deer antler projecting out of it's snout, and the brass plate under it reads "Rhinochuck" - and damn if it don't look just like one!