4i 8 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



end of cut i, making the incision down the hind part of each 

 foreleg. Make a cut from the hoof of each hind leg, along the 

 hinder part of it to the lower end of cut i. Now skin round 

 the legs ; sever the leg bones at the knee and hock joints, 

 leaving these bones with the hoofs attached to the skin, but 

 with the skin freed down to the hoofs. Now skin the animal 

 in the ordinary manner, using the edge and not the point of 

 your knife, and on reaching the neck make the T shaped cut 

 described above, along the top of the neck and between the 

 antlers. This will allow the skin to be removed entirely from 

 the head ; but before proceeding with the head the skin should 

 be removed from the body as far as the head, and the head 

 severed at the neck joint. 



Having washed any blood off the hair and detached every 

 fragment of meat or fat which you can get off the skin, stretch 

 it out upon the ground in some airy spot where it can dry 

 naturally, unaffected by sun or fire. Dress the skin with pow- 

 dered alum, or failing that with wood ashes, and don't peg 

 it out. When prepared in a solution of soda by the taxi- 

 dermist at home, the alum-dried skin will become as pliable as 

 kid and will resume its natural proportions, and these should 

 satisfy any honest hunter. 



The methods recommended in this chapter are of course 

 only for preserving trophies in the field. All trophies should 

 be sent home for final preparation as soon as possible, either 

 prepared with alum and packed dry, or in a tub of pickle com- 

 posed of alum and salt in the proportion of two-thirds of the 

 former to one-third of the latter. t 



Some men make a practice of carrying a saw with them to 

 divide antlers and skulls for greater convenience in packing, 

 sawing the skull right through from crest to nose ; but though 

 trophies are undoubtedly somewhat easier to pack in this way, 

 I do not recommend it, as a very heavy wapiti head of mine so 

 treated is constantly annoying me now by breaking away from 

 the rivets which should hold it, to come thundering upon the 

 ground. 



