How To Cape A Buck For A Shoulder Mount

[Music] before we get started keeping this buck there's a few really really important factors i'd like to cover because they make a huge difference in how that trophy comes out the first is how you gut that animal so when you gut that animal particularly if you have to gut it the night before or the day before as we did in this case be sure to only gut it to about the end of the rib cage if not even a little more conservative to the back as you can see we stopped our cut about mid body that's to preserve all of this brisket and cape that we're going to need for the taxidermist that's the first trick today i'm using the outdoor edge pro system the game pro it's got a number of different knives in the set i'm going to use several up and i'll go through kind of when and where i shift on those but the first one i'm going to use is actually their gutting knife it's also a skinner and a lot of hunters will use the the gut part of the the knife blade to gut their animal that's great for that but it also is great for making these circular body cuts i put some blue tape on here we're going to make our cut lines today so the first important cut is this mid-section cut so again start back here you're going to make a perfectly circular cut around the back of the animal as you can see we've made our first cut the ring completely around the animal again behind the last rib giving plenty of skin for the taxidermist to work with our next cuts are now on the legs so you're going to start right here you work right up that seam following all the way through then as you get uh into the sort of the the the elbow if you will the joint of the deer's leg here you're gonna then turn and go up and follow it's a pretty good definition between the white belly here and that you can make a straight cut until you just have a straight line all the way up to your center cut for these cuts i want a very sharp knife so that my my cuts are very precise very minimal work for the tax arms to do this i'm going to use the razor light it's a replaceable blade knife super sharp this is a three inch blade perfect for the task so we make the cuts uh from the midsection down we're going to come back and ring these legs we're going to follow that that line right up here to the the elbow basically the the joint of the the deer here and there's another hairline coming up that separates this white brisket hair from the brown body here we're going to use that same line and come up as straight as we can to this center point and we're going to follow it on the same side so we made all of our cuts all the cuts we need to make next part is peeling the high down now the key here is to leave as minimal meat on the height as possible that'll just make the the work easier for you skinning it and also the taxidermist the key to keeping the height as clean and free of meat as possible is really how you get started and you really want to keep that skin and your blade close to the skin separating the meat keeping the meat on the carcass it gets a little trickier as you get to the neck but it's pretty easy on the hide one tip that'll really help you speed up this process is as you start to get some hide to work with get your hand underneath it cup it grip it pretty hard and keep tension really tight tension on this that allows you to really make progress each time you make a cut you'll actually get more more gain with your with with your knife so just something to keep in mind as to the more and more tension you can put on the faster and more precise you can be once you get down to where the shoulder meets the leg i find it easier to get kind of crossways with the animal in such a way that i can pull this way and make lateral long cuts it allows you to really really make some some gain quickly on these cuts same on the inside staying lengthwise with the leg makes it the easiest and then once you get down to the very end of this leg cut you can actually just pop it off using your hand just pull it down all right now we're going to make our belly flap cut down if you if the deer's front legs are still on it i like to actually just kind of put it between my legs make the animal stay stationary and kind of gives you a secure workstation so we've got our skins down to the base of the neck got a little bit more of the neck to take care of one thing we want to make sure we do is leave at least six to eight inches of the neck so the taxidermist can take that key measurement to make sure he picks the right form for your trophy okay folks this is the finished product we're looking for got about eight inches of the neck still intact so the taxidermist can take the measurements they need got a nice clean cape so minimal work for your taxidermist final step is simply to remove the head get a knife cut through all the tissue you can use a bone saw hacksaw whatever you have after that simply take it directly to your taxidermist if you can or put it in the freezer but at the very least keep it cold because you don't want that hair to slip after all that hard work so next time you harvest that buck of a lifetime just know you can do it as well

Channel: HuntStand

Views: 9,998

Rating: 4.9480519 out of 5

Keywords: how to cape a buck, deer cape, taxidermy, skin a buck, brian murphy, huntstand, huntstand media, outdoor edge, deer processing, butchering deer

Id: zGAQ_gYk7PM

Length: 4min 38sec (278 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 24 2021