Dennis Kamstra

[richard roop]

#174974

Been reading with mixed feelings that he’s retiring. Naturally, I wish him a great, well deserved retirement ……….. but I’m gonna miss his column.   Kinda like the old Whilem column in the NFAA magazine back when they still cared about the grass roots backyard members.  Good solid information born of experience.  Thank you, Dennis.

One thing of note ……….. Dennis mentions in his last column about skinning out a cape for a mount.  Might I humbly suggest; Practice !! ….. If you have a doe ……… practice skinning out the head like it’s going to the taxidermist. Odds are, you’ll make mistakes.  But ….. you’ll learn and the next one you try will go better.  Then when it actually counts, you got this !!!

[Stephen Graf]

#174976

Good advice Richard!  It is tedious work to cape out an animal, but practice does make perfect.

As I sit here typing, I am looking up at a caribou mount on the wall.  My guide on that hunt (many years ago) caped it out with his ax.  With my help, he had it caped out and quartered up in short order so we could start the long trip back to camp.  If it can be done with an ax, we mere mortals can surely learn to do it with a knife.

And that said, I have run into a few taxidermists that won’t accept a job unless they do the caping as there can be cut throughs unseen they don’t want responsibility for.

Dennis will be missed!

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