Part-time hunter
Ten Pointer
I have had terrible luck and I have made boneheaded mistakes with all the fans that I have saved to mount. In my garage/man cave all I have to show for all my dozen or so years of hunting them is the jake tail which was taken on my first ever hunt with my old friend Lasttombstone. I freely admit that he did everything except pull the trigger but I was hooked after that. I was even using his gun and ammo and my shot was so poor he had to run down the slightly wounded bird. If you know him ask him about him yelling grapevine to me while chasing the bird.
Since then I have had three tails I wanted to hang on my wall. The first one I tacked on to a flat piece of cardboard and put it on top of the freezer in the garage to dry out. I didn't have any borax so I used salt on the meat left on it. In just a couple of days I found feathers all over the floor where a rat had gotten to it. Oh well. Lesson learned right? Another one I shot at Tombstones I left with him to flatten out for me. You guessed it, something got into his shop and chewed on this one too. But I have to say he took the feathers and made a very cool wreath with a pic of me with the bird in the middle and a dated wingbone call hanging on the bottom. I actually like it better than just a fanned out tail.
The last bird I got last season had a nice fan so I brought it home to work on myself. As I had no borax yet I put it in a plastic bag and put it in the freezer to keep the varmints from getting to this one. By the time I finally found borax at a local hardware store and got the tail out of the freezer, it was locked into the folded up position and I couldn't spread it out at all without the feathers coming unattached. So as I said, I've had some bad luck and been ignorant about this process. But with the new season almost upon us and having a permit in my wallet I am going to hope for another shot at mounting a turkey fan. I'd say the moral of this tale is although I have no trophies from my turkey hunts I have the memories of them and some pretty good meat too. And the real moral is never quit trying. And I won't.
Since then I have had three tails I wanted to hang on my wall. The first one I tacked on to a flat piece of cardboard and put it on top of the freezer in the garage to dry out. I didn't have any borax so I used salt on the meat left on it. In just a couple of days I found feathers all over the floor where a rat had gotten to it. Oh well. Lesson learned right? Another one I shot at Tombstones I left with him to flatten out for me. You guessed it, something got into his shop and chewed on this one too. But I have to say he took the feathers and made a very cool wreath with a pic of me with the bird in the middle and a dated wingbone call hanging on the bottom. I actually like it better than just a fanned out tail.
The last bird I got last season had a nice fan so I brought it home to work on myself. As I had no borax yet I put it in a plastic bag and put it in the freezer to keep the varmints from getting to this one. By the time I finally found borax at a local hardware store and got the tail out of the freezer, it was locked into the folded up position and I couldn't spread it out at all without the feathers coming unattached. So as I said, I've had some bad luck and been ignorant about this process. But with the new season almost upon us and having a permit in my wallet I am going to hope for another shot at mounting a turkey fan. I'd say the moral of this tale is although I have no trophies from my turkey hunts I have the memories of them and some pretty good meat too. And the real moral is never quit trying. And I won't.