Bulzeye; The last skull I did I left buried close to a year when I dug it up it still needed some additional cleaning , this was done buy emersing the skull in bleach water( careful you dont let the antlers come in contact with the bleach water as it will bleach out your antlers) after soaking in bleach water( Dont leave the skull emersed to long because it will cause your skull to start to flake off like peeling after a sun burn. Check it every day) I remove skull and wash out with hose using as much pressure as possible to blow out those pieces that were still attached but be careful when hosing around nose part, You dont want to use to much water pressure around the nose or you will damage the fragile bone pieces and cartilage of the nose. I then used tweezers etc to remove any pieces still attached. I used white paint to paint the skull and used a light varnish coating to finish it off. If you do get any bleaching on the antlers you can use wood stain or order antler stain from a taxidermy supplier to restain your antlers. ( I had to learn this the hard way )