I can' t believe someone here truely thinks that a deer mount honors an animal any more than eating it and disposing of the carcass. Antlers are bone right? Just like a leg or back bone but no one is asking you to mount those just throw them away. Seems kind of disrespectful to me. I have some nice sets of antlers I have kept and some I have thrown out to go back into the earth and hopefully grow feed for the next buck. Don' t kid yourself those deer don' t care what you do with the horns after you kill them. I am not opposed to a deer mount, in fact think they are very neat, but I also do not think they are in any way required to respect or honor the animal.
And your deceased relatives could give a rat' s rectum if they are in a fancy coffin, dressed in thier Sunday best either but it' s something we do to preserve the " honor" of the life they lived.....
Therefore you can carry that into the hunting world saying to mount an animal is to " honor" the animal and the life they lived....neither the human, or animal in this case cares what happens to it after death, but somehow the human, or animal in this case lives on when stories are told of it' s mount, memories are reborn just by looking at it...the honor is in our mind....not what the animal thinks.
Our native Americans hold honor in the spirit of each animal....to disrespect, or dishonoring the animal is to disrespect or dishonor yourself. If you can' t find some truth in that...I feel
for you. I guess you hunt for other reasons than myself.