07/22/2026
This is uncomfortable to talk about… but like alot of other things in life, there’s usually positives to be taken from any negative situation.
When someone brings me their animal, I do the work order describing what they want done and all the details we talk about. I try to make everything fail safe and fool proof. From the time the customer leaves the shop, until they pick up the finished product 6-8 months later, their animal undergoes many different stages/steps in that time. Without good note keeping on the work order, it’d be easy for a mistake to be made. A lot of these animals are “once In a lifetime” to many hunters. I take that seriously.
This customer brought me a moose last fall. They wanted the moose to be turning to its left while hanging on the wall. I clearly wrote this on the work order like always. My first mistake was when I ordered the mannikin. The item number in the catalog for the straight pose and left pose were identical, except for the last number. I mixed them up. So, delivered to me was a straight pose moose.
When actually mounting the moose, I cross referenced the form to the work order wrong. Mistake number two. The result? A moose mounted and completely finished in the wrong pose. Not what the customer wanted.
In all the animals I’ve done throughout the years, to my knowledge, I’ve never had this happen before. I’ve heard this happening to other taxidermists, but because I take detailed notes,I never thought it would happen to me. When I showed the customer a picture of the finished mount, they let me know it was wrong. I was sick to my stomach. Without hesitation, I let them know I would fix it right away and make it how they ordered it to be. The customer was great about it, which I’m thankful for. So that’s what I did…I rehydrated it, cut, chopped and rebuilt it to be a left turn instead of straight…and put it all back together. Here is the result. The first photo is the original incorrect pose….the second photo is the same moose redone, corrected, finished and ready to go. Like the customer wanted. I’ve since made adjustments to prevent this from happening again.
Moral of the story, I’m not perfect. Mistakes can happen, but I really do my best to make sure they don’t. If something happens, contact me first. I 100% stand behind everything I do. At the end of the day, I just really want everyone to be happy with what they get and the overall experience.
