A good friend ordered a DVD and got a subscription to a magazine on taxadermy last spring figuring he would teach himself, I think he's off to a good start! what do you guys think?

another

another

another

keep in ind he's only been at it for a year and learned from a mag and video, these were all harvested by friends, and he won't accept anything except for materials.

I'd love some feedback, if its positive I'll pass it along to him, but don't sugar coat it, constructive critism would be great to help him get better.

WOW... Looks great... I'd definetly say he's got the gift... I just mounted my first gobbler and would like to post some pic to see what everyone thought...

The first two, he goofed up pretty bad. Shame too, they are real trophies.
The next two have huge gains in improvement.
BirdsI know nothing about, so they look really good to me.
Everyone starts out with problems and gets better with experience.
Tell your friend good luck and enjoy it.

livbucks, I know the ears vs rack are bad on the 1st mount, and I told him so, but pls elaborate.
He can't fix a problem if he doesn't realize it exists.

I think he needs to lighten the paint around the eye area and also it looks on everyone of the deer he had the lip skin pull out of his lip slot.You should tell him to join the state taxidermy association. He will learn alot more in a shorter period of time.

The first one has many problems.
The ear butts are terribly low, the earliners are shaped bad, as in too pointy at the tip. The skull plate is mounted too high on the mannikin. The inner ear skin is drummed really bad and is not placed inside nearly enough. The dark hair should make the bend and go into the ear so that there is a ring of black hair on the inside of the ear cup. The nose is not thinned nearly enough and needs tucked into the nostrils more and taxi'd better. The lips are not tucked nearly enough. There should be no lip showing except for the very front under the nosepad. The eye clays are not substantial enough for a mature deer and the eye shape itself is not even close. There should be more skin taxi'd toward the eye from the back as the hair patterns are pulled out of place. The tear ducts look pulled, and are probably not thinned enough. There seems to be wrinkles in the neck that have the hairs pointing in various directions from not being taxi'd correctly. All the problems are typical of a first attempt and should be expected. Just a shame it was such a trophy that was experimented on. The second deer has many of the same problems but seems a little more improved. The next deer pics look quite a bit better as they progress, I'm sure you can see that. I'm not trying to beat him up here but these things are obvious to me. The eye shape on the second two looks so much better that one would think it was done by a different taxidermist. Tell your friend to get some good reference pics oflive deer, their noses, eyes, ears, earbutts in various positions and study them thoroughly and have them handy when mounting. The missteps will be obvious when he looks at live reference. Never look at pics of mounts as reference, only live deer. Hope this helps.