3D printing is making the dirty business of mounting an animal’s skull over the mantle a bit less gory.
A growing number of hunting enthusiasts and several companies are taking the fabrication principles used to make everything from lamp shades to advanced medical equipment and applying it to deer and other “trophy” animals. Once the skulls are 3D printed, a hunter or collector can then take their real antlers or horns and slip them pre-made holes. The end product looks pretty close to the real thing, but cuts out the need for hours of intensive, bloody cleaning or an appointment with an expensive taxidermist. Printing heads separately also opens up mounting options for shed hunters who collect naturally discarded antlers, but do not want to kill an animal.
Though the space is mostly made up of individual creators, Utah-based Bucks N Bull Skulls currently sells an assortment of 3D-printed deer, elk, and caribou skulls ranging from $50 to $150. Bucks N Bull Skulls founder Shawn Sanchez, himself an avid hunter, tells Popular Science that the process starts by scanning real animal skulls he has collected over the years. The scanning is done entirely using an iPhone app, and consists of taking upwards of a thousand photos of a skull. Those are then transformed into a 3D image. Production time varies: Sanchez says a typical deer skull takes around 12 to 15 hours to print, while a larger, more complex elk skull can sometimes take close to 50 hours.
While skull sizes can vary widely, Sanchez says the base of antlers tends to have a more uniform shape, allowing them to fit most printed casts. Sanchez works alongside artist and 3D designer Daniel Smith (who goes by the moniker DTM247) to add fishing touches to the skull designs “bring them to life.” Once printed, the skulls undergo stress testing to ensure they can reliably support the weight of attached antlers without breaking. Keeping with the community-driven ethos of 3D printing, the Bucks N Bull Skulls also makes its digital files available to customers who use their own printers.
Sanchez himself is relatively new to 3D printing. He spent the previous 17 years in the automotive industry, working for companies like Lexus and Acura, but found himself “laid up for some time” following back surgery. He bought a printer (his 14-year old son already had one of his own) as a way to stay productive and to explore whether he could apply it to his passion for hunting. While scrolling through online maker forums, he stumbled across Dan, who was already creating deer skull models. The two teamed up, combining Sanchez’s hunting expertise with Dan’s design experience. Since then, Sanchez has become a vocal supporter of the collaborative 3D-printing community.
“I really think that if more people knew about the technology and how user-friendly it is, more people would have this in their home literally sitting there waiting to create whatever it is that they possibly need,” Sanchez said. “There’s so much that can be done with it.”
A cleaner alternative to boiling or beetle
Normally, mounting involves a bloody and very labor intensive process of stripping a skull clean of flesh and meat, leaving only bright white bone behind. Doing that isn’t for the faint of heart. DIY approaches typically fall under three categories: boiling, water pressure, or beetles. All of them require some serious mental fortitude.
The first method involves submerging a severed animal head in soapy water, bringing it to a boil, and then letting it simmer for hours. A blog post from the hunting site Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation advises hobbyists using this approach to periodically remove the head from the pot and use a coat hanger to “scrape away any loose meat.” Needless to say, this shouldn’t be done on a kitchen stove.“Be prepared for a stinky mess along the way,” the writer warns.
Using a high-pressure water gun to strip away flesh is faster, but it risks damaging the skull, which defeats the purpose of mounting it. Hunters who take this approach must also contend with dodging chunks of flying debris, which isn’t ideal.
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The beetle method, meanwhile, involves placing the skull in an enclosure with carnivorous insects, which will typically leave it spotless after several days. The critters will almost certainly leave the skull spotless, but maintaining a healthy beetle colony requires enduring the ongoing stench of rotten flesh. Some hunters opt to take their skulls to a “beetle guy,” but they aren’t exactly in high supply.
Those who opt to take their skull to a professional taxidermist can typically expect to wait weeks or several months and likely spend several hundred dollars on the service. It is also worth noting that all of the skulls referred to here are considered “European” mounts. More lifelike approaches that include an animal’s fur and facial features (think eyeballs and lips) typically require the expertise of a seasoned taxidermist and much more time and money.
“It’s a little morbid,” Sanzchez, who’s prepared a fair share of his own European mounts in the past admitted.
Mounting without killing
3D-printed skulls offer several other advantages. Since the head isn’t made of real bone, it can retain its white color indefinitely, whereas real bone yellows over time and can become brittle. Sanchez sells black skulls and has experimented with more exotic colors like purple, but says the majority of customers still prefer the more traditional white. Hunters also don’t have to worry about damaging a physical skull, either during the hunt or while hauling it over long distances through mountainous or forested terrain. Taxidermists are also interested in the process, Sanchez says, especially as a way to make full copies of molds for customers who want to have several versions of their same mounts in different places.
But maybe most interestingly, 3D printing makes European-style mounts accessible to people who aren’t hunters at all. Deer and other ruminants shed their antlers each spring and regrow them even larger than next season. A growing number of enthusiasts known as shed hunters venture into the woods to collect these discarded antlers. Combine scavenged antlers with a printed skull, and one is left with an attractive mount without ever having to pull a trigger or take a life.
Bucks N Bull Skulls is the one of the more prominent businesses selling these designs, but there are also other enthusiasts on Reddit and 3-D printing forums who showcase and detail their own approaches. Many of these hobbyists share their files online, allowing others to download and print the designs using their own devices. And while it’s certainly possibly a Snachez could lose a potential customer by offering up the files, he believes people will still opt to order from him for the sake of convenience and assured quality.
“For me it’s possible that it could take away from the business, but most likely not because there’s always going to be someone who’s going to say, ‘I don’t want to have to deal with this,’” he said.
