Feather Creek Taxidermy

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Feather Creek Taxidermy

Gina Isabelli - Head Taxidermist. Although Gina didn't get into deer hunting until 2009 and didn't kill her first buck until 2010, she has always been into something with animals and nature since her childhood. From animal photography to veterinary medicine to animal behavior studies! By trade, she has been a biology/animal science high school teacher for 19 years with extensive background in animal dissections and anatomy. After working with skulls in the business for 3 years, and after numerous requests from customers, Gina decided to take her anatomy/art skills further and took the plunge to be trained to offer game head mounts. In June of 2019, Gina traveled to Iowa to train under the world famous taxidermist Joe Meder. There she completed a game head mounting course with Joe individually. She is a member and competes in both the Illinois Taxidermist Association and National Taxidermists Association. As an educator, she will carry over that mindset and continue her taxidermy education with seminars, additional coursework, and competitions. Her goal is to focus on game heads for the 2019 year and then summer of 2020 focus on bird taxidermy. With her attention to detail along with her artistic eye you won't be disappointed! Tyler Cain - Skulls Only Taxidermist. Tyler has been hunting and cleaning skulls for over 20 years since he was a teenager. Tyler wanted a way to better clean the skulls after years of boiling them, therefore compromising the bone tissue, and we created our Dermestid beetle colonies to clean the skull while preserving their small bones. Tyler’s focus is mainly skulls and hydrographic prints of skulls. Tyler prides himself on the details and is a perfectionist when it comes to a good looking skull. Tyler has a beautiful daughter Karlie who loves to work right a long side her dad. Skull Cleaning Information: With skull cleaning, all skulls require time to degrease therefore most skulls will take minimum 4 weeks once they begin the degreasing process. Once your skulls are done with the beetles and enter the degreasing/whitening phase please expect your skull to be with us for at least a month if not more. Each skull is unique - some degrease quickly and easily and others take a long time. Things you can do to help minimize that time: please do not allow your animal to hang head down for too long - this forces the blood into the bone cells and then if trapped and then frozen this causes the degreasing time to lengthen. Please get your head into a freezer as soon as possible cutting it off right after the base of the skull. The longer again that warm blood sits in the tissues the more that is seeps into all the bone cells - this extends the times of degreasing. Just because it is cold outside doesn’t mean bacteria decomposition doesn’t start to attack the tissues. If we feel that any meat of a head is questionable we will charge an additional cost - we have received too many in the past year that we had to slow simmer first after skinning the heads to kill all bacteria and insect issues before even placing them in with the beetles - this delays our time of processing customers skulls and extends the cleaning times. We can ONLY feed the beetles safe fresh meat. Depending on the number of skulls received before yours, will depend on how many months it will take before we get to yours. We do reach out to you once your skull is up and with the beetles. We will never rush the process as this may alter our end result. But we do offer a warranty that if any skull should start to show oils even after extensively going through a degreasing process we will gladly take the skull back free of charge and put it through another round of degreasing. Bone is living tissue and some tissue will delay any hidden grease from revealing itself and we understand and respect this. We are now sealing our skulls with a museum quality protectant that helps to preserve the skull. It gives it a bit of strength and makes it easier to clean the skull of dust. It will not yellow over time. Unlike sealers, we can remove this from the skull easily if for some reason a skull started to do something funny. We sell metal skull hooks that works nicely on your walls for $15.00 and we also offer some other habitats for the skulls for a price. Starting summer of 2019, you must pay a minimum 50% of service & must SIGN an agreement when you drop your heads off - no exceptions. We have had too many clients that have not done this and then once skull is done, we are sitting on them for months on end before they are picked up. We will also adhere to a stricter policy of when you must pick up your completed skull. Please contact us for pricing. Summer of 2019 prices for skull cleaning are going up due to costs of materials and time.

Game Head Mount Information: Customers will be done in order, however if there is a special situation, for an additional fee there could be an adjustment to that order. A minimum 50% deposit MUST be made, you must have all proper conservation permits/confirmation numbers on hand and signed agreements at the time of service. You must meet with Gina not Tyler as you will need to discuss the look you are wanting. Gina will be using Microtan Tannery located in Blue Mound, Illinois to tan all of her capes. She has visited their tannery and the owner also trained under Joe Meder. They are such a high quality tannery that they receive hides from all around the world. She takes numerous photographs and takes detail notes of each cape and each are clearly marked so that she can guarantee you are getting back your cape and not someone else's. They also sell tanned capes if you are wanting to have a game head remounted. Their turn around is typically 2- 4 months for a wet tan cape used for mounting once hunting seasons begins and about 6 months for a dry tanned flat hide, but for an additional fee she can get that turn around in 30 days. Gina decided to go with this method instead of tanning the hides at her shop from suggestions of highly respected taxidermists. This will allow her to focus more on the actual mounts and details since she only does this part time during the school year - this will help with her turnaround times and quality of work. As for materials - Ears will be either bondo or ear liners based on the condition of the cape/ears. Forms are only highest quality forms from Ben Mears or Revolution. Eyes are glass eyes made from Joe Meder/Tohekion which are high quality showing all proper details of an eye. Each mount will have all the details that are present in a live animal - Gina does NOT cut corners just because they are commercial mounts and treats each mount as if she was showing it in a competition. Her goal is to always respect the animal and bring it back to life as true as she can. Contact us for pricing.

Summer 2020 - Gina is taking Turkeys for Turkey tail or turkey tail/wing mounts, but is still not taking in full bird mounts. If all goes well, she will be headed up to Wisconsin to train with a taxidermist that won world in bird categories. She will then be offering small water fowl and pheasant mounts hopefully by fall. Then geese and turkeys 2021. Tyler is planning on learning how to do fish taxidermy work so hopefully he will be offering this as well soon.

We take business from around the United States and any active military or veterans receive 15% off of any service. Please provide proof. For any taxidermy forms, prepping or shipping information, please contact us so we may email you our forms, terms & conditions. All items are processed in the order received. Excellent quality work takes time. We will not rush! We handle things in a timely manner and keep you updated of the process along the way. We keep a log of literally every day or every stage of your prized possession If you have any questions of the processing of skulls or game head mounts, don't hesitate to ask.

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