# Need help home-mounting a pheasant.



## Betta132 (May 23, 2013)

Hello! I don't actually hunt (too young and don't think I could manage to kill something, I'm a softie) but I've joined this forum as it's the only place I could find a decent taxidermy forum. 
I've done a very small amount of taxidermy before; mice and rats, one winged rat, and a squirrel hide that came out stiff as a board, but now I have something new to play with; a nice ringtail pheasant hide that I bought off Ebay. It's tanned nicely, but it's missing the feet, and it was actually intended for people to get feathers from to tie flies. I was going to do something with it involving a winged rat, but it's a really nice one, so I've decided that I want to try and stuff it. 
It seems to have been tanned with borax or something similar, and it smells a tiny bit funky from being in a shipping box in Texas summer, but otherwise it's in good shape. The feathers are kind of ruffled, but I think I can get them back in place. The main problems are the fact that the head is dried with the eyes mostly closed, and I'm not sure how to make it look at least fairly natural. We have a cat, so a floor base isn't really an option, and my dad says pheasants don't sit in trees... I have a bookshelf I could put some kind of mount on... 
I was thinking I might try to make it look like it's sleeping, since the eyes are pretty much closed, so I'm wondering if anyone has any imput or tips.

Yeah, I said winged rat up there. Long story. Also, the rats were bought frozen from a pet store; they were intended to be snake food, but ended up being taxidermy and cat food.


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## Betta132 (May 23, 2013)

Anyone?


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## Rick Acker (Sep 26, 2002)

Sounds like a nightmare of a project. Without seeing your bird, it's very tough to tell you what you should do. Pheasants are a dime a dozen. I would get somebody to gift you one that's been recently shot and frozen with all of his parts still in-tact. PM me with any further questions you might have. Thanks


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