Several of our deer shoulder mounts have started to show rapid degradation due to some kind of insect (I assume beetles). We have found the empty casings in the ears and below the mounts, clumps of loose hair, and straight lines that appear where the damage has occurred like you would expect. One mount is considerably worse than the rest, but surprisingly, the closest one to it doesn't show any signs of wear yet. The mounts are in two adjacent rooms, but each room has some that are affected as well as some that don't yet appear to be. We also have a full turkey mount that doesn't appear to be affected in one of the rooms; it is not the room with the deer that looks the worst (I read somewhere that turkeys can be a magnet for beetles, but not sure if that is true).
I searched for advice online and there was no shortage of suggestions. Extreme heat, freezing, bug bombs, insecticide, professional exterminators specializing in taxidermy (does this really even exist?), etc., but they all seemed to be controversial in their effectiveness or could adversely affect the quality of the mount. I contacted our taxidermist (who has now retired), and he recommended applying a 50/50 mix of borax and boric acid with a bulb duster, especially in ears and around the seam with the mounting plaque. We applied that pretty heavily a few months ago and twice more since then with lighter coats. We expected things to continue to get worse for a while because of the damaged hair that had not yet detached, but the damage seems to be continuing to spread.
So two questions:
1. Has anyone else had similar issues in the past that could offer some helpful advice on how to stop any further damage and hopefully prevent it from happening again in the future?
2. Can anything be done to repair the damaged mounts? My guess is that there is nothing that can be done for the damaged capes, but that a new cape could be purchased to replace the old one. I've never had to do either though so I am not sure what is possible or how expensive or difficult it would be.
I searched for advice online and there was no shortage of suggestions. Extreme heat, freezing, bug bombs, insecticide, professional exterminators specializing in taxidermy (does this really even exist?), etc., but they all seemed to be controversial in their effectiveness or could adversely affect the quality of the mount. I contacted our taxidermist (who has now retired), and he recommended applying a 50/50 mix of borax and boric acid with a bulb duster, especially in ears and around the seam with the mounting plaque. We applied that pretty heavily a few months ago and twice more since then with lighter coats. We expected things to continue to get worse for a while because of the damaged hair that had not yet detached, but the damage seems to be continuing to spread.
So two questions:
1. Has anyone else had similar issues in the past that could offer some helpful advice on how to stop any further damage and hopefully prevent it from happening again in the future?
2. Can anything be done to repair the damaged mounts? My guess is that there is nothing that can be done for the damaged capes, but that a new cape could be purchased to replace the old one. I've never had to do either though so I am not sure what is possible or how expensive or difficult it would be.
