Vermont taxidermists prepare game skulls for wall display
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BY Dennis Jensen Staff Writer - Published: September 14, 2008
Successful hunters sometimes boil their deer skulls to remove all of the meat. Or they saw around the skull plate, then scrape off all of the hair and meat. Sometimes, they'll just leave the deer head in a secure place and hope nature takes her course.
The desired result is always the same — the skull or antlers serve as a nice reminder of successful hunts. The end product, however, usually leaves a lot to be desired.
The people at Ridgerunner Taxidermy in Williamstown have a better idea. They will take your deer skull, remove all the hair and then let their collection of tens of thousands of the tiny, flesh-eating dermestid beetles do the heavy work.
The beetles can remove all of the flesh from all kinds of game animals, large and small.
As far as Roland Tousignant and Jeff Poulin can determine, Ridgerunner Taxidermy is the only kind of its operation in New England using dermestid beetles to prepare the skulls of deer, moose and bear skulls — any animal with a skull, for that matter — for display.
Stored in unplugged freezer chests at between 70 and 80 degrees, the beetles are placed in a container, where they swarm over the skull and consume the flesh.
"When you put the skull in there, a half-hour later, you will see no bone," Poulin said. "It's just covered with dermestid beetles."
Ridgerunner Taxidermy, in operation since May, specializes in utilizing dermestid beetles. The shop does not engage in traditional taxidermy.
Until Ridgerunner opened for business, any hunter who wanted to preserve a skull had to send their prize away, according to the 61-year-old Tousignant.
Poulin works the beetle end of the business, while Tousignant finishes the project by getting the skull to a clean, snow-white and then mounting it on a plaque.
Poulin, 37, removes all of the hair and meat, including the tongue and the brains. "We try to take off as much as we can and then let the beetles do their work," he said.
"I can put a deer head in tonight at 6 p.m. and, by tomorrow at noon, pretty much all of the flesh is eaten off," Poulin said.
After the beetles have eaten the skull clean, they lay their eggs on the bone. The larvae hatch out in a few days "and then abandon the skull," Poulin said.
The finished product
"Dermestid beetles measure just a little bit larger than a lady bug, but not nearly as wide," Poulin said. "The larvae do most of the work."
The larvae grow to about three-quarters of an inch long and about as wide as a toothpick.
After the beetles do their thing, Tousignant puts the finishing touches on the skull,
"I do the whiting after they come out of the tank and soak them in a de-greaser," he said. "Then I take it out and prepare a paste, which I apply to the skull. I'll leave that on for a few days and then take it off. I might have to do that two, three times to get a pure-white skull. Then I let it dry in the sun, clean it up and mount it on a plaque."
Poulin added: "We don't dip it in chemicals of any kind."
The do-it-at-home process favored by many successful hunters often results in a less-than-desirable product, Tousignant said.
"A lot of people boil the skull and scrape away the meat," he said. "Boiling will deteriorate the skull, crack the skull. There will be a lot of meat left on the bone, in the brain cavity, in those little pockets. With the beetles, the bone is still intact, the skull plate is intact and there's not a bit of meat left. It's as pure and smooth as a baby's butt."
The shop charges $120 for any deer or bear skull. A plaque is $50. Those figures are far less than the going rate for a mounted deer head, which can cost as much as $400 or $500, Tousignant said.
"If someone is lucky enough to get a nice bull moose, it costs $1,000 now to mount," Poulin said. "We'll do it for $250 and it comes out nice and white."
The process takes about 2-1/2 months. "We're set up so that we can do eight deer heads at a time," Tousignant said.
If someone takes a nice buck — or any buck, for that matter — and desires to keep the antlers as a reminder, a skull mount is the way to go, Tousignant said.
"Instead of cutting off the horns, they have a nice, white skull. It shows better," he said.
Meanwhile, word is getting around about this unusual taxidermy endeavor, Poulin said.
"Business is building up now. We anticipate a busy season," he said.
"We love the work," Tousignant said. "It's very interesting, very challenging."
The taxidermy shop is located on Gilbert Road in Williamstown.
For more information or to bring a skull in for treatment, contact Tousignant at 433-6040 or Poulin at 433-1523 or e-mail at RolandSueTous@yahoo.com.
Contact Dennis Jensen at dennis.jensen@rutlandherald.com
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