just got him back today. very happy w/ the work, though i think the eye could've been done a little better (tear duct), though going thru all my pics, this is a great rendition of my hills buck from last fall... whaddaya think?

Nice mount! You got it back pretty fast. It takes about a year in around here.

DD

dak,

Nice mount for sure!  VERY quick turnaround indeed. 

Nice deer and nice mount.  Congratulations Dakotasin.

I'm curious, is that a 12 guage slug hole in the deers right ear???  Maybe it is just the light in the picture??

I paid $350 for my deer mount this year.  sounds like that is the going rate.

BEAR

thanks fellas.

moose- i posted the story last fall when i got back from the hunt. but, a real quick, stripped re-hash: still-hunting thru the black hills (dense forest). heard a fight, saw a decent buck run out and stop at 15 yards, let him go in hopes of something better. snuck thru the trees and found this guy unaware. 338 win mag (hornady 225's at 2950), 30 yards (or less), severe quartering-to angle, bullet entered in front of the point of the on-side shoulder and exited just ahead of the diaphragm on the offside, exit hole maybe a 50-cent piece size. deer ran 3 or 4 yards and expired peacefully and quietly before i got to him. the two does he was running were the only sounds we could hear...

bear- i went back thru the pics to see what you're talking about, but i don't see it. at any rate, it is highly unlikely that even were he shot before that it would've been from a slug - everybody here uses rifles. part of the reason i wanted this one done was because the cape was in such outstanding shape (no torn ears), and because his coloring was so light. most deer here are much, much darker than this feller.

the taxidermist i went thru does his own tanning in-house, which is why the turn-time was relatively fast (dropped him off on 12 nov, got him back on 4 april).

moose- a generous helping of rl-22 did the trick for me. i'd have to verify against my notes as to primer, but i am pretty sure it was a federal primer and win cases.

ranger- i didn't want to try to make the deer look any way in particular. he's a very narrow-racked beast, and i've never shot one w/ a rack like this (tall, narrow, heavy). also, the way he is mounted was the way that i last saw him thru my scope before the rifle went off. i'm not real big on trophies and scoring and such, i just wanted a 'nice mount'. also, i've seen the ears-back mounts before and they just look funny to me... anyway, i wasn't trying to hide or accentuate anything w/ the mount. i just wanted him to look very natural.

moose- also, if you run a search in the reloading forum under '338' you should find quite a bit... i know i posted my own 338 development there, and at the same time i think cb was working w/ a couple of different powders and 225 hornadys in his tikka. i think cb was leaning more to rl-19, but i had no troubles getting pressure signs w/ rl-22 before i maxed the case out, which indicates to me that rl-22 isn't too slow. i never worked w/ rl-19 in the 338, though i run it in my 300 wsm (something else, too, but can't remember off hand what that 'something else' is), and i think it is a pretty good powder...

dakota,

I use a max load of RL-22 with the Nosler Part 225 gr... was just hoping that the powder charger will work well with the Hornady.  Glad to see that you are using the same powder.

Nice buck Dakota. Now you got me wishing tomorrow was opening day of the season.

Gary