After poisoning, fill them with tow or cotton, bracing the mouth open if wanted so and keep in the desired position until dry. Then the fibrous filling is removed and they are filled permanently with plaster or paper pulp and a piece of board fastened in the back of head to furnish a hold for screws from the back of the shield or panel.
The inside of the mouth will need remodelling with wax and the whole given a coat of white varnish. Any bright colors which may have faded should be retouched with oil colors before varnishing.
Suitable mounts for small heads are in the regular shield and round and oval shapes, and rustic panels of natural wood. A number of small heads may be mounted on one long panel.
Mounting heads, of horned game especially, is a branch of taxidermy which suffers no diminution in popularity. Such work is turned out at the present time in far better shape than it was years ago, but many fine heads still remain that were gathered in days of abundance of buffalo, elk and mountain sheep.
In skinning horned heads never open the skin up the front of the neck; not only are such seams difficult to hide but the skull with antlers cannot be entirely removed from the skin as it should be.
To do this open the skin down the center of the back of the neck from just back of the horns to the shoulders or at least half that distance. A neck of medium length is preferable and many a fine head has been ruined by being cut off just back of the ears.
Connect the upper end of the opening cut with the base of each horn or antler by a short branch making the whole opening of a Y or T shape. Turn the neck skin inside out down over the head, which in case of a deer may rest on the antlers, until the ears are reached, cut these off not too close to the head and the horns are next met with.
[Illustration: SKINNING HORNED HEADS. CUT ON HEAVY LINES.]
Work the skin from around the base of these with a dull knife or a small screwdriver blade. With the same tool pry the thick skin away from the frontal bone. When the eyes are reached have a care not to cut their lids, working closer to the bone than the skin. Use the screwdriver again to scoop up the skin from the so-called tear pits in front of the eyes.