# natural heads



## bakewater5 (Feb 23, 2009)

I have skinned four snows this weekend. The video guide i am using uses fake heads. I have skinned these from the beak back. My questions are

1 can i use the natural skull in the same manner as an artificial

2 if yes how do i persevere it

The reason i want to use natural heads is cost. This is my first attempt at taxidermy, and I figure if it looks like *!#@ they will make nice fair weather decoys.

thank you for any help


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## Matt Jones (Mar 6, 2002)

You skinned them wrong for what you're going to try to do. You can use the natural head but when you do it you do not skin them back. Instead you leave the skin connected to the bill and leave it all attached skinning it out from the back of the head forward.

I've only used artificial heads for waterfowl. I've done upland using both methods, and there's advantages/disadvantages to both.

The problem you're going to run into is adhering the skin back to the bill now and shrinkage of the bill (which is the reason why arificials are almost universally used for waterfowl). On upland, the beak doesn't shrink very much...on waterfowl it shrinks a lot.

What I'd do is use bondo to fill-in the head cavities. This way everything else should go about the same for you...mount it like it's an artificial head.

In the future, If you're going to use the real skull I'd recommend getting a different video and learning how to do it the other way.


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## bakewater5 (Feb 23, 2009)

Thank you Matt. I was kind of figuring that was the answer.


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## wagner24314 (Nov 27, 2007)

you can skin them back with the real skull. i do it all the time be sure to remove brain and all meat. then borax it and clay in all the meat you removed. wrap it in plastic so the clay so the clay will stay soft before its put back in the skin in the last steps

Here is a pic of a snow and wood duck skined from the beak with real skull


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