How to Store Taxidermy

The trophy room pictured above belongs to a gentlemen in the local SCI chapter. He has had the great fortune to be able to hunt all over the world and is also fortunate to have a 5,200 square foot trophy room in which to showcase all his animals. I consider myself lucky to have been able to view his trophy room and hope one day to be able to display my trophies in a room as large as his. I, however, am nowhere close to having the amount of animals or the amount of space this guy has and, thus, recently found myself in an interesting predicament. I needed to put my taxidermy collection into storage.

The majority of us will probably never have a trophy room that exceeds the size of most people's homes (darn!). We are left with a few options then as our taxidermy collection proceeds to outgrow our available wall space. You can sell some old mounts, but that's not really an option. For me, since trophies are essentially a 3D photograph, it's akin to selling pictures from your family vacation. Another option I've heard of is displaying your mounts at a local sporting goods store. This is a great option ... if you have a local sporting goods store. Sadly, they're few and far between where I live, so I was left with one final option. I had to put my animals into storage.

Initially, I wasn't too thrilled with the idea. I envisioned a damp, cold room filled with cockroaches and rats. After doing some research, I found this is not all true about storage units.

I was going to be putting eight animals into storage, all shoulder mounts, so I didn't need a particularly large space, but what I did need was a climate controlled space. The reason I want climate control is that it regulates the temperature in the unit within a certain tolerance (70-80 degrees F at the place I chose). If the unit is not climate controlled the temperatures could fluctuate considerable depending upon where you live. Fluctuations in temperature can cause the skin on your trophies to expand and contract until the hide eventually begins to crack. 

I looked at various public storage facilities, the most well known and wide spread being, the aptly named, Public Storage. The big concerns for me, aside from climate control, were clean facilities and had been in business for a long time. Nothing worse than to load are your animals into the storage unit then the place goes out of business and you're searching for a new place to go. I settled on one of the local storage facilities. They had been around for many years, had very clean facilities, had climate control, were reasonable in price, and were very tight with security. You'll need to do a little searching to find one that has meets your needs.

The biggest issues I found when looking for a unit was finding one with a wide enough doors. I found several places I liked, but the doors were not wide enough to accommodate the crates I would be putting in them. Make sure you find out the size of the door for the unit as well as all the walk ways and doors leading up to your unit. Doesn't matter how nice the unit is if you can't get your items in it.

Photo thanks to Custom Design Pallets

Now that you have settled on a storage facility, you need to find something to store your animals in. I have had taxidermy shipped to me in crates before and figured this would be the best way to store the animals for an extended period of time. You can either build your own crates using plywood or, if you live near your taxidermist, you can ask him if he would look for some crates the next time he is going to the tannery. Tanneries are getting shipments constantly of crates from peoples' safaris from all over the world. An African safari, in which the hunter took several animals, requires a big crate to ship the hides and horns back to the USA. These are great crates to use for storage as they are already made and usually cheap or free. My taxidermist was able to secure some crates from the tannery for me to use. I'm very grateful for that, saved me lots of time and money!

One of my big concerns was making sure to keep pests out of the crates. I used some silicon sealant to seal th edges of the crate, my first line of defense. In addition to sealing the edges, on my taxidermist's recommendation, I put some poison pellets in the crate. As my taxidermist put it, "Just in case the rats chew through the wood, give them something else to eat besides your mounts." I also added, again at the advice of my taxidermist, some No Pest Strips. They emit a vapor that kills all sorts of bugs without leaving a residue on your taxidermy. They only last about 4 months, but my theory is they just need to kill any bug that sneaked into the crate before it was sealed shut. Between the climate control, the rat poison, and the bug killer, I think the crate is pretty well secured from pests (keeping my fingers crossed).

If you live in a climate where humidity is present, you may want to add some silica gel packets. If too much moisture gets into your crate it can cause mildew to grow. The silica gel packets will absorb moisture from the air to help keep the humidity low. I didn't put in any silica gel because, mainly, I couldn't find any locally and, secondly, I live in a dry climate with very low humidity. If I had some silica gel handy though, I would have put them in and I would have been much more concerned about finding them if I lived someplace like Texas or Florida.

Now that you have the crates, the pest killer, and the silica gel packets, there is really only one thing left to do - put the animals in the crates. This step requires two people and a drill. The mounts can be orientated in every position using all sides of the crate, so this becomes like a jigsaw puzzle of sorts as you try to fill every last void in the crate with a head. I started with the biggest animals, then worked my way down. Once I had determined how each animal was going to fit in the crate, I would have on person hold the animal in position while the other person drew an outline inside the crate. Remove the animal, then drill 4 pilot holes well within the drawn border (since I don't want a screw to puncture the hide). Next, have one person hold the animal inside the border while the other person uses some wood screws going through the pilot holes to secure the crate to the back of the mount (which should have a plywood backing itself). Keep repeating this process until all the mounts are in. The better at fitting the mounts in a crate you are, the more animals you can fit and/or less crates you'll need.

 Photo thanks to Ample Hunting

After you've got all the animals in, you've put in the pest strips and silica gel, you'll just need to close the crate up. I place the lid on top, drill in some screws and put a coating of silicon sealant around the edge to, again, make sure all gaps are filled and you're done. The animals are ready to go into storage now. If you plan to open the crate soon and/or rotate animals in storage with ones at home, I would recommend against sealing the top of the crate with silicon.

There's really not much more too it than placing the crates in the unit (which will again require some help from a friend). Storing taxidermy is probably not what any hunter wants to do, but it beats the alternatives. Eventually, you'll be able to bring those animals out of storage. I just like having piece of mind that they're safe while in storage.