DEAD DEER HANGING

When I returned to hunting (after a 20 year absence) I needed an excuse to kill something other than the simple joy of the hunt. My excuse was art. I was living on 7&C on the Lower East Side, but every chance I got I drove up to Wolf Lake and hit the woods. I started small. After so many years of living in cities, I didn't know how I would feel pulling the trigger. Grey squirrels were the first to fall. Squirrels are small AND tastey. Broiled up with a little onion and garlic- MMMMMmmmmmm. Then I took the skins, salted them down, and put them in a stack of cardboard ravioli boxes, tails hanging out. Then came turkey and coyote and deer. I was back.
Most of these early pieces are gone now. Maggots and mice got to everything. My sparse taxidermy technique did not preserve the carcasses well enough. The only pieces to survive were the ones that were taken right down to the bone. So in the late 90's I began biting the bullet and getting specific animals mounted by a professional. I have a leaping coyote, a branch straddling turkey and a full deer skin rug on an ironing board. Then, last season I had an idea. Why not get a mount that looks exactly like the animal does when you shoot it? A dead mount.
Yesterday my taxidermist called me to say my deer was almost ready. I opened the door to his shop and there was my 8 pointer, hanging just like I had seen him last December. My taxidermist, Fernando Neves, said it was fooling everyone. Someone had actually dropped a dime to the game warden to tell him Neves had an illegal deer hanging. The job was excellent. Yesterday I shot another big, tagged tom, in the same spot in WSS that I had killed one in the Spring. I hung him from my tree behind the kitchen and just before I was to begin plucking him I decided he would be my next mount. This shit's not cheap. I learned years ago you have to spend money on your art (even if you never sell it). It's an act of faith. So when this bird is mounted, wings splayed, hanging from one leg, I'll cut my beard and add it to his. That should please just about everyone.