Criticize my mt lion mount.

[Ray]

Overall I think that you captured the action which you were after. Imagination is sometimes hard to get out of another person. Therefore you can't possibly get every aspect to someone else's expectations. I think the eyes are not perfect but I have never actually seen a cat do that to me before. If it did I doubt I would get such a clear shot. Anyway - I would not want that kind of mount but if I did request such a pose I would be pleased with the work. I believe that is a very cheap price to pay as well. You can't please all the people all the time. But you can certainly give your best effort.

[bucklucky]

Looks to me he got what he paid for....$1000.00 is way cheap even without a base.

I can say your hair patterns are way off, look at the cheeks on each side and you can see a cowlick they do not match up at all. Looks like you used a cast lip nose system and you can see a line around the nose. You didnt get a very clean edge when you trimmed the nose out, and your apoxie work needs some work. Your wrinkles are just wrong, you need to use good referance when working on critters like that. Actually you need to use good referance when mounting anything. Cats are tuff animals to get right, is that your first ?

      Look at these referance pics and you can really see where you went wrong. I also posted a picture of my first open mouth Mountain lion in which I didnt pay attention to my referance when I was setting the eyes and made them how I thought they should look. I was way off on mine.

[ICEMAN]

Criticize, to find fault with.

I feel that the facial skin sags forward too much causing a "pug" dog like appearance.

I feel that the skin along the top of the nose would look better if a crease ran in the opposite direction, from tip of nose towards the eyes, instead of across the nose..

I am no expert, but I feel that the ears would still be rotated a bit forward, not facing down as much, this just from memory.


As a contractor for years, when ever a customer had an issue with our work, we got first right to fix the work. This would seem only fair. For your customer to have taken elsewhere first seems wrong. You can never make everyone happy...

[furbearer365]

just giving you some helpful criticism about your cat.  I graduated from one of the top taxidermy schools around located in Montana and learned from one of the best. He was also an avid hound hunter and had major reference material to learn from.  I do not do taxidermy for anyone but myself due to horrible customers in the begining, but that is another story.  The first thing that caught my eye was the wrinkles in the fur around his neck and chest area.  Its seem that maybe the form was a little to small.  It seems that the head could have been filled out a little more also.  The reason I say that is if you look at reference photos the ears should be set back a little further.  The eyes seem to be fine but if anything, maybe the top eye lid should be down further and closer to his pupil.  I think you were right on when using the cast lip system, it is hard to beat unless you know exactly what you are doing, but no taxidermist will spend the time on a commercial mount to make it look like the finish product of a cast lip.  Anyway, coming from someone who knows a little about taxidermy I think overall it was a good mount and no reason for the customer to not like it.

[norsepeak]

wouldn't be my first choice on the mount, but overall it looks good.  The only thing I noticed was the top of the head/ears area looks a little wierd, but for the price it's very good.  I paid way more for mine.

[Skyvalhunter]

I don't know why that photo looks photo shopped.

[boneaddict]

skins too bunched up, and the nose isn't even as Charlie also pointed out.  I noticed the nose before the eyes.  Its like there is too much skin, not a big enough form, or its pulled forward too much or something. 

[TeacherMan]

You willing to do another one for that price? I would be willing to shoot one and have it mounted for that price. They are usually like $2100 I thought. It would scare the #$%t out of my kids  and maybe me if I had been enjoying a few liquid refreshments. The only thing I would say is maybe tone down the pissed off look a little next time, but with that said I'm sure if I came face to face with one they would look like that.

[huntnphool]

I dought that anyone else can do as well.

You did better than I could do but there are indeed a few people that would have done better, Charlie being one of them, Garth at Fidalgo being another

[gasman]

ears and eyes make it look like a dog.

[Bearhunter]

All I can say is from the look of the form and neck on that boy, he was a big ole Tom!  What was his estimated live weight?