Well it's been a little longer than I expected, but I think it was worth the wait. I got my elk that I shot in New Mexico in 2010 back from the taxidermist this week.
Here's what it looked like coming home, having it fill up the entire bed of our short bed pickup really helps you realize how big it is. I got a lot of strange looks and a few thumbs up on the drive home.
When I had it mounted I picked out this specific form and the angle that I wanted him turned to show off his left side that is a little better than his right. He has a neat hole in his left G4 and his left G5 is a few inches longer than his right side and his right G3 has a few inches busted off. I was planning on putting him in the center of the house, but once we got him home we decided to see how he looked over in the corner where my European elk mount had been. It was a pretty simple matter to try it there since there was already a lag bolt in the wall. The problem was that once we got him up, we decided that he looked really good there.
When it is all said and done I think we are going to leave him there for now. His still looks pretty impressive to me even with his weaker side showing and he seems to "fit" there in the corner. His fronts are probably his best feature and they show real well like that.
Here's a different angle showing the form that I had him mounted on. It's a wall pedestal form and I think it seems to make him more life like than the standard form flat against the wall. The part of the form that is showing is covered in a brown suede leather.
Another angle. His left side ends up almost against the wall so you can't see the hole in his G4 unless you get all the way against the wall and look. We may still end up moving him a little farther to the left so you can see his left side a little better.
I've struggled to get decent pictures of it with the windows on both sides messing up the exposure on the camera and the flash overpowering it in the evening up close, but not enough farther away. I did get a couple pictures of it with my mule deer mount in the same picture, but the window ends up messing up the exposure some. He makes my 180" mule deer look kind of puny!
Here's another picture of them together. From this angle you get a much better feel for how small the deer looks next to the elk. Our dining room table sits right in front of the elk. You can see the back of one of the chairs right in the center of the picture.
The original intent was to put the elk where the deer sits now and move the deer to the left of the fireplace that you can barely see all the way to the left of the picture. I didn't realize how high up the elk's antlers would go (the base of the big beam above the deer is at 9') and if I put the elk there his antlers are going to straddle the beam which would look odd I think. The other option is to move him to the left some, but that would put him in the way more as even as high as he is his nose is still around 6' off the ground and if you aren't watching you could hit your head if you are tall enough.
Oh well, I'm very happy with how it turned out. I really like that form that it is mounted on and I think it looks great.
Going to take a little getting used to having such a huge animal hanging out with us at dinner though!
That's it for now. Nathan
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