He lived most of his life in Aurora, Illinois and based on what I’ve heard from those that used his services, he’s a damned good taxidermist. I’ve seen bad taxidermy, so in my limited knowledge of the art, I’d have to say he does a pretty good job.
He now lives outside of Branson, Missouri and has a garage and a couple of storage sheds filled with his creations.
I’ll get to that.
Apparently my wife has had her eye on one piece in particular for her whole life, a bobcat. She put dibs on it as hers when she was young and her dad has hung onto it for her all these years. On a Thanksgiving weekend trip to visit him last year, the bobcat was packed up and transported home.
It took here awhile to figure out where to put it. She had to give some consideration to the climbing abilities of one of our cats and whether or not the cat would take offense to the intruder in the house. The bobcat sits up high enough that, so far anyway, no fights for territory have ensued.
It does make an interesting conversation piece.
I like the overall composition of the bobcat, squirrel and log.
Also last year a camera crew came out to film his collection and do an episode on him for one of the cable shows. In typical old guy fashion, he can’t recall if it was History Channel, Travel Channel or some other one. He does think it will be aired some time in March, we’ll see.
Following is a bunch of pictures taken of his collection. He didn’t hunt for the bulk of these, he buys skins and forms and puts them all together simply because he enjoys the challenge. He has a chest freezer full of more of them. Other skins are handed to him by other hunters that have no use for them. It’s a wide ranging collection.
As you look through these keep in mind that this is what my wife’s house looked like as a kid. Stuffed animals were in every room, down hallways and on stair landings. As she said, imagine waking up in the middle of the night, half asleep, and every place you turn you’re faced with one of these things.
Used to give her nightmares.
He also has a pretty good sense of humor.
Then, there’s his bow collection. At last count he had somewhere around 200 longbows and recurves, he won’t hunt with or shoot compound bows. I have five of them that he’s letting me play with.
The plan is to use either the longbow or the longbow with a slight recurve on my first bow hunt for deer, if I can get my act together and get out and do it.
But that’s a story for next year.
walt franklin
15 Feb 2012God, what a menagerie! On a smaller scale it reminds me of a dusty tavern we used to visit in the hills. The place had skins and heads in every room and hallway, and even had a mount of Barney, the family beagle, standing near the bar.
Ken G
15 Feb 2012The pictures don’t do it justice Walt. There were things buried behind other things that I couldn’t get to. If I ever wanted to open a bar like that, I’d be all set.
Dan Roloff
15 Feb 2012I don’t have a problem with taxidermy but that place would freak me out during a blackout caused by a thunderstorm. Cool stuff.
Ken G
15 Feb 2012That was my wife’s biggest complaint when she was a kid and that stuff was all over the house.
Dan Roloff
15 Feb 2012No wonder she puts up with you 😀
The men in my wife’s family do more hunting/fishing/golfing than I do. That is why we are doing fine 😀
Clif
16 Feb 2012What? No Jackalope?
That is seriously cool, no wonder the histovery-graphic channel came out to see.
Ken G
16 Feb 2012He’s been selling some off. After I put this up I went through my wife’s pictures from a trip down she made a year earlier.
Swamp Deer. Evil looking thing, red eyes, I think he put fangs on it. I’m sure there’s other things like that under layer 3.