0 Items in Your Cart

Dennis Behn - Artistic Explorations Blog



Email Subscription Sign Up



request catalog

 
How to Mount a Pronghorn


With Pronghorn Antelope, hair slippage seems to occur more often then with other animals. A number of factors cause this. Pronghorn antelope season is September and early October when the weather can be very warm. In rough terrain, you may have to transport the antelope a long distance without proper care. Solutions for this would be to get the antelope in the shade and cooled down, then skinned as soon as possible. Your tool kit should include everything you need to take care of your cape: a pair of ear openers, a good caping knife, (like the Piranta Pro skinner), a Victorinox straight blade knife, a plastic tape measure, latex gloves and salt. Another option is to take the antelope to a locker plant or taxidermist and have them cape it. A lot of taxidermist’s in antelope country will cape the head and either flesh and salt the hide or freeze it for you for a reasonable fee.

Every hunter agrees that antelope have a smell of their own! Having the hide commercially tanned will decrease the odor but not completely. The horns will often retain more odors than the cape. The cheek glands also seem to reek on mature bucks that are rutting. Shaving the gland down helps with the smell and getting this area thin will help prevent slippage. After you have thoroughly fleshing, you can salt and dry the cape and send to a commercial tannery or salt the cape (until most of the moisture is gone), then use Deodorizer wash, (one ounce per gallon of water) agitate the skin and then rinse in clean cold water, drain, and directly put in Krowtann.

To view a diagram of the proper way to measure the following. Take the following measurements before caping and removing the horns from the cores. Measure from tip to tip, prong to prong and the tip on each side of the nose, (this should be done before caping the head). Next, drill a hole under the base of the horn on each side (this will be your reference point to place the horns back on the cores). Drill a small 1/8” hole approximately 2 1/2” up from the base on the backside of each horn, cut between the horn and core, this helps to get the horns free.

The next step is to submerge the skull plate and about 1/2” the horns in boiling water. Cook for 15 minutes, remove and twist the horns, if the horns are not loose, boil them for approximately 10 minutes more, then try twisting the horns again. When you have the horns removed, scrub them in Van Clean. Rinse with hot water and then soak in the Deodorizer Wash. Scrap off all the meat you can from the cores and skull plate. Let the skull plate cook longer if necessary to remove all the meat. After removing the horns from the cores, soak in Deodorizer wash for four hours, then rinse and let air dry.

After the skull plate and horns have dried 24 to 48 hours, reattach the horns with Bondo. Use the measurements taken earlier and the reference hole to get the horns positioned properly. Fill the hole on the back with a small ball of Aapoxie Sculpt and paint.

The Pronghorn Antelope has distinctive markings and hair patterns. In some ways, this makes mounting easier, if the skin fits well and there is not a lot of repair work. However, if proper care and the markings are uneven, the overall appearance of the finished mount will be hurt. Use AFG hide paste to position the skin, and take extra time to line up the markings before final pinning, nailing or stapling.