Boil the Skulls
The Turning Feral Journal - Day 39
Day 39: Brain matter, eyeballs, and flesh were littered all around me… No, this wasn’t a flashback to a time of war, but rather a regular ol’ Wednesday night in my front driveway. The massacre scene was the result of my trying to do some euro mounts with skulls I had collected. Normally, I would take skulls to a taxidermist or just sell them at auction, but with nothing better to do after a long day of trapping, I figured I would do what I do best… learn something new, the hard way.
Now, doing a euro mount (or, ‘freedom mount’ as Steve Rinella calls it) can be done a few different ways. The longest and cleanest process is to put your skull(s) into a tank full of dermestid beetles or ants to eat away all of the meat and biological material. However, the quickest way is to boil your skull to get all of the “meat” off the bone, which is what I elected to do.
With low amounts of propane on hand, I decided to start a fire and boil water the old-school way. In a large pot I added five gallons of clean water, just enough to cover the deer, wolf, three beaver, and two marten skulls that were laying in my freezer. With enough wood added to my fire, I was able to get the water to come to a rolling boil. At the two hour mark, I took them out and started the painstaking process of removing hunks of cheek meat, cartilage, and brain matter with my forceps and knife. Some bits were “fall-off-the-bone” tender, but some areas around the gums and eyes were still clinging on to their host and forced me to put them back into the boiling water for a bit longer.
In a perfect world, I would have been able to remove the boiled skulls and give them a light power washing to remove debris from the nasal and brain cavities, but as luck would have it my lone power washer crapped the bed. So, I was forced back to using my forceps, knife, and needle nose pliers for the delicate work. Being the ape that I am, this delicate work was done in a not-so-delicate way. In fact, in my haste I did crack a few of the thinner bones, which I hope will not be too aesthetically displeasing (whoops).
But, with most of the meat gone and the skulls mostly in tact, I took a break for the rest of the evening. The next step will be to degrease the skulls in warm water with a solvent to ensure they do not yellow over time. Then, once dry, I will apply a paste of household peroxide with an over-the-counter bleaching powder to get them as white as possible. It’s a time-intensive process and is definitely the type of dirty job that would make Mike Rowe proud.
Daily Prompt: What is something you have historically outsourced to someone else? Could you try to do it on your own? If so, what material or equipment would you need ?:
Motivational Passage:
Don't fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.
-Louis E Boone
Rewilding Action: If you have an interest in processing animals on your own for fur, meat, or taxidermy, you need this one item… a chain mail glove! Yup, this is a trick I learned from a local taxidermist who was teaching me to clean bear hides this past March. He used a chain mail glove to pull the hide taught when fleshing and the glove would keep his knife from puncturing his skin. He showed me his hand, which was covered in scars, and mentioned that it took him a long time to learn that the glove was the way to go! If you have a local kitchen supply store, you can pick one up there… here is the brand that I have been using:
