Hi Everyone
Does anyone here have or had anything to do with this Taxidermist in Polokwane RSA.
Let us know what you thought of them.

Hallo!!we used them for many years and the dip/pack s wery good but! we got some wery bad tannings back and therefore we now use Safari taxidermy who is in the same town and allways deliver good stuff back and newer had a problem with the paperwork from them

I too use Safari Taxidermy and in my experience their work is good and their service is excellent when it comes to communication and special requests/requirements.

If you want top quality at a decent price you might also consider Lifeform Taxidermy at www.lifeformtaxidermy.com.

I and I'm sure many others here can highly recommend them.

Im waiting for a bag of animals from Lifeform, i have not seen the quality yet but the service from Lifeform is outstanding.

Their service is great huh!

I guarantee you'll love the quality of their work.

Steve if you ever go by Lifeform please take some pics of my animals and send to me : Do you know if they have a special taxidermist that is very good for leopard and lion ?

They're only up the road from me and I'll be happy to do so but they have an immense operation and I doubt I'd be able to find them.

You would be better to contact whoever is handling your account and ask them to put a note on your file for them to photograph your trophies at an appropriate stage. I know they'll be happy to do that for you.

I don't know their entire operation but I'm fairly sure they have a few specialists who concentrate solely on the cats.... I'm equally sure that Cecil and Gerry will keep a close eye on all the work but especially the cat work.

And keep a long way from marius seer fountain at feather and fur taxidermy he fucked upp one of our groups and it took almoast 18 months to sort up the mess he made

Shakari,

Not so sure I'd use them again. I'm looking at a 13 inch warthog which i took with a bow in 2008, arrived 2 months ago, that i simply cannot display as the stiching on the underside of the neck looks frankenstienish. ditto with my waterbuck, except on the back of the neck. granted, these are from my first african hunt and I'm hardly familiar with african taxidermy but it certainly doesnt seem right. pics as soon as i figure out how.

If you can't manage to post pics, feel free to email them to me at shakari3@mweb.co.za and I'll be happy to do it for you.

However, if you're talking about a shoulder mount warthog that has been cut underneath, you need to blame the skinner not the taxidermist because the skinner cut the animal wrongly.

At the end of the day, a taxidermist can only work with the skin he has and if it's been cut or treated badly or wrongly, he has to make the most of what he has.

We'll soon be selling a fantastic DVD about taxidermy on our website and I reckon every African hunter AND every PH needs to watch it.

The DVD is about 100 minutes long (from memory) and shows the viewer everything there is to know about how trophies should be treated from the time the animal falls to the time it's delivered to the taxidermist and beyond.

I've been in this business for 30 years now and even I learned a few things!

We've started using Field and Stream in Louis Trichardt, which isn't far from that area. They are very good, and reasonably priced. No problems to date.

Shakari,

I will send a pic. Thanks for the info. As I said, no experience w/ african mounts. Still experiencing my initial reaction, which is/was ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
Apologies to Life Forms as well.

Thanks for sending me the pic.

Assuming you told the PH that you wanted the warthog and waterbuck to be skinned for ordinary shoulder mounts, both animals should have cut up the back of the neck.

In the case of the warthog, they should then cut a Y incision behind the ears and then skin off the face without cutting the skin further. The other way to cut a pig is just around the body and then just skin it off and roll the skin down as you go.

The only time that (under the chin) cut should be made is if you wanted a fullmount to stand on the floor or a part mount to stand on the floor such as if you wanted it to stand on the floor and look as though it were emerging from a hole beside something like a termite mound. - Bearing in mind how it has been cut and if the stitching bothers you, you might like to consider having a local taxidermist make a mock termite mound etc and have them set the warthog mount into it. - They obviously take up more room but they do look bloody nice.

In the case of the waterbuck, the straight cut should stop close to the horns and then divide and cut around the horns and then skin the face off in one piece. If you told him you wanted the head pointing straight, the initial cut would be more or less in the centre of the neck. If you told him you wanted the head turned, the initial cut should have been slightly to the opposite side if the turn. In other words, if you wanted the head turned to the left, the cut should have been a inch or three to the right hand side of the centre line. In the case of an animal that has a line of hair that stands up at the back such as a zebra, you would cut on the appropriate side of that.

The cuts should have been straight and not jagged.

Looks to me as though the skinner fucked up big time. That said, ultimate responsibility must lie with your PH who should have either known the skinner knew his job or told him exactly how to do it or supervised him or shown him how to do it or just done it himself.

If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say the most likely scenario would be that the head skinner wasn't there for some reason and an untrained or part trained person tried or was told to take over....... and obviously had no idea of what he was doing.

If you have jagged cuts and/or if the necks look suspiciously thin, another factor could be that the skinner failed to salt the edges of the skin sufficiently and Lifeform were then forced to trim the rotten/damaged edges before they could get good material to stitch to.

When I look closely at the pic you sent me, I'd say Lifeform made a very good job of trying to rectify a serious stuff up. - I'm actually suprised they managed to do as good a a job as they did and I'd say none of the blame should be put at their door.

This might be of interest: http://www.shakariconnection.com/skinning.html

Here's Pennsyltucky's incorrectly cut pig:



and here's my correctly cut pig:

Here's that DVD I mentioned and my apologies for taking so long to get it on the site!

http://www.shakariconnection.c...ng-trophies-dvd.html

I'm using Field and Stream as well. I have had no problems and they have been very friendly to me. Also, I looked at thier shop, first class all the way.

Pennsyltucky

That seam can repaired by and experienced taxidermist, I get them skinned like that all the time and can easily make the seam invisible. Check with a reputable taxidermist in your area and I'll bet he can repair it, so you won't have to look at that all the time.

quote:

Pennsyltucky

That seam can repaired by and experienced taxidermist, I get them skinned like that all the time and can easily make the seam invisible. Check with a reputable taxidermist in your area and I'll bet he can repair it, so you won't have to look at that all the time.

+1


Looks like the seam was just filled. The "filler material" or two part epoxy clay needs to be feathered out along both edges of the seam, textured to match the skin and then painted. Most of the ones I get are cut this way too. It is not a problem. the seam may be separating a little too but it is hard to see in the photo. warthogs have to dry completely after mounting before any finish work can be done on them. If the skin is still drying and shrinking you will have cracks where the epoxy repairs were made.

They are skinned this way because it is easier to get the cape off around the tusks. They can cut from the top but it is much more time consuming to do.

quote:

Originally posted by Grafton:
They are skinned this way because it is easier to get the cape off around the tusks. They can cut from the top but it is much more time consuming to do.

If they're skinned like that for a shoulder mount they're skinned incorrectly.

I guarantee I or any of the trackers or skinners I use can skin a warthog correctly in no more time than it takes to skin it that way.

shakari,
But most trackers and skinners don't tie the pig to a tree anda truck and then drive the truck away to get the skin off like you do

Thank you all for the threads on which Taxidermist you do use. I have the Taxidermist I recommend, but really wanted to hear more about the particular one mentioned at the head of this discussion, anyone else have any dealings with Thaba Mahaka ??

DDR,

Damn but why didn't I think of that as an alternative.

your as big a tight wad as I'm you thought about it then laughed to your self and said HELL NO wait till you see the fishing rods your going to love them