Prepping Your Harvest for a Taxidermist with Beth Johnson

Artemis

Beth Johnson has 15 chest freezers, 2 walk-in coolers, and 3 added walk-in freezers. Johnson's taxidermy shop is predominantly women, and they specialize in hunting mounts of all kinds (from bison to zebras), and doing the odd job for Hollywood here and there. This week we hear from a taxidermist with 35 years of experience on how you can best ready your harvest to be mounted by a taxidermist. Don't forget to take the Artemis podcast listener survey for a chance to win a $100 gift card to Isle Royale Outfitters. 2:00 We've got some serious freezer real estate on hand 3:00 Hollywood's need for taxidermy (those roadkill items you see in movies aren't fresh carcasses) 4:00 Doing a taxidermy job out of someone's favorite mule #foreverfriend 5:00 Getting your science degree, becoming a teacher... then realizing your path is elsewhere 7:30 A predominantly female taxidermy shop 9:00 How you take care of an animal before bringing it to a taxidermist influences the quality of the final mount 10:00 That duck whose feathers got blown off? Maybe not the keeper to mount 12:00 The "pantyhose" trick for keeping feathers flush and lifelike on bird mounts 14:00 The scoop on freezer temps 17:00 Odds are you don't gut/skin the same way a taxidermist does; Tips for getting your quarry from the field and into the taxidermy shop 19:00 Multi-species displays... it's a dream job where science and artistry blend 23:00 Plant/vegetative elements in displays 26:00 Turn-around times 34:00 Comparing mounts from the '60s versus present day - the forms are completely different 37:00 Prepping a hide for tanning 40:00 Yep, you can get the hide of a favorite dog tanned up for your couch 43:00 Salting a hide properly (birds included!) 48:00 Taxidermist vs. catfish 51:00 Embracing trial and error 53:00 Recreating illegal-to-harvest species like eagle and owls using chicken/goose feathers 54:00 A drawer of chicken feathers also comes in handy when Hollywood needs a parrot doing a specific thing 55:00 Feather, Finn and Fur Taxidermy & Red Barn Processing (and Atlanta Poultry Processing for all things chicken) 56:00 "I just can't sleep fast enough to get back to work"... when you love what you do

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