dvdegeorge:

I don't have a taxidermist which I have established a relationship with. This pronghorn head was my first mount of any kind. Also, I didn't think the shipping costs would be prohibitive.

I thought it would be the best course to take the whole animal to the taxidermist and have him cape the animal for me. In my case, the taxidermist was about a 15 minute drive from the hunting ground where I hunted. I have never caped an animal. How much skinning do you have to do? Do you leave the skin on the head and just take the skin off the shoulders and neck or do you have to fully remove the skin from the eye juncture, the muzzle, the lips, take the cartiledge out of the ears, turn the ears inside out. That regime sounds like something I would be very likely to screw up the first time, maybe the first two times, maybe the first five times I did this. In the specific case of our hunt, my son's buck was taken on our first day. The second day I took my pronghorn. It is a two day drive home. It would have been fully four days from taking the pronghorn to getting to the taxidermist. What do you do to the cape in the meantime to keep it from spoiling? Just salt the heck out of it?