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Ivantherussian03
02-24-2007, 01:21 AM
I am cleaning the skull of a female wolf. Any ideas out there? I have boiled it and I am cleaning it but wow, alot of tissues!. It is mostly all off, but I am still scrubbing away.

Lee
02-24-2007, 01:36 AM
If it's like most all the females I've known, the insides should be relatively tissue-free.........[smilie=1: .................................Lee;-)

monadnock#5
02-24-2007, 10:45 AM
Oh Lee, I sure hope my wife dosen't see your post. That would offer a whole new way to get banned from the forum. There's no "ignoring" my wife.

Ivan, come summer, if you could stake that skull to an anthill, they would make short work of any remaining tissue.

Ken

sundog
02-24-2007, 10:59 AM
If Lee is right, it won't need to be on that ant hill long enough to get sun bleached...

Yea, don't let the ladies in on this thread, or it might be your skull out on the ant hill!

Hackleback
02-24-2007, 11:26 AM
I have been told that boiling skulls will make the teeth crack. A taxidermist that has won many awards in taxidermy contests to clean skulls a differnt way.

Get as much flesh off the skull as you can, then place it in a 5 gal bucket and fill with water. Put in a warm place AWAY from the house, amiamals that like stinky stuff; the roof of an outbuilding is perfect. Every 2-3 weeks change the water. CAUTION!!; this first couple of times it will be nasty. Do this on a windy day and stand upwind. After several cycles the scull will be clean, but a bit on the grey side in color. Note: some of the teeth may fallout and be in the bottom of the bucket. the teeth can be glued back in when you are done cleaning and bleaching. Bleach the skull with full strength peroxide. This technique does a good job on the nasil bones that will look like lace.

shooter2
02-24-2007, 12:14 PM
I am cleaning the skull of a female wolf. Any ideas out there? I have boiled it and I am cleaning it but wow, alot of tissues!. It is mostly all off, but I am still scrubbing away.

I cleaned three cat skulls by simply hanging them in a mesh of chicken wire in the woods for about three weeks. Clean and sparkling white.

carpetman
02-24-2007, 02:20 PM
Get as much flesh off as you can. Soak in a mixture of 1 1/2 cups of 20 Mule Team Borax to a gallon of water. Soak 3 days,this will prevent it from stinking. Soak in peroxide and I think they use a stronger peroxide than the run of the mill stuff---I think it comes from a beauty supply place.

Ivantherussian03
02-24-2007, 02:33 PM
I had not really considered leaving it in the wood. But a great idea. The same animals that rob my traps of bait would clean that flesh off, even in the dead of winter, and being frozen too. I have a fox head to try this with.

This is why I like this web site; it sparks conversation and new ideas.:drinks:

Bigjohn
02-24-2007, 03:28 PM
I'd use the ants nest method just make a wire cage to see that nothing else runs off with it.

John.

MT Gianni
02-24-2007, 06:01 PM
The trouble with leaving it out is the bones would get crunched and not leave a perfect skull. If you have seen shed horns and bones out they are the first bit of calcium the mice go for. Any thing bigger would have the jaw strength to make it unidentifiable. Gianni.

garandsrus
02-24-2007, 06:20 PM
Ivan,

I buried a deer skull in the garden for about a month. The "in the dirt" critters did a great job of cleaning it with no bone crunching. I just need to bleach it now.

John

Scrounger
02-24-2007, 07:02 PM
Ivan,

I buried a deer skull in the garden for about a month. The "in the dirt" critters did a great job of cleaning it with no bone crunching. I just need to bleach it now.

John

I shudder to think how many cat skulls archaeologists will dig up in CarpetMan's back yard a few hundred years from now...

RugerFan
02-24-2007, 08:21 PM
After boiling and removing as much meat as possible, I soak my skull in a solution of Biz bleach and water for a few days. Must be Biz brand powdered bleach. It will eat the fleshy stuff without attacking the bone so much like other bleaches (An Alaska game biologist clued me in on the Biz use. It works). Also have had good luck adding Sal Soda to the water used for boiling. Below is a link that may be helpful:

http://www.mucc.org/SkullMounts.htm

Ricochet
02-24-2007, 09:11 PM
I thought this was going to be about what I do with shampoo every morning.

carpetman
02-24-2007, 10:11 PM
Yea I been burying skulls in my garden but aint growed no cats. I wrote Texas A&M about the problem. They said send them a soil sample.

wills
02-24-2007, 10:48 PM
.Yea I been burying skulls in my garden but aint growed no cats. I wrote Texas A&M about the problem. They said send them a soil sample.

You're probably planting them upside down.

pumpguy
02-25-2007, 01:32 AM
You can buy them off ebay for about 15 bucks per 100. This is plenty as you want the larvae the most. They reproduce at a rapid rate in the right environment. Here in the lower 48, you can put a skull in a wire cage and they will find you. You could try this. I do not know if they are found up there or not. They are easy to id. The adults are a black beetle about a half inch long. They have a distinct white belly. The larvae are very tiny to begin with and go through several molts before they become adults. They are brown with little round heads and they are hairy. This is how colleges and museums prepare all of theirs. The other methods mentioned here will all get the flesh off but they all do at least a little damage to the bone or the teeth. Do not feed the skull to the beetles if you do try any of the other methods as it will kill them or they simply would not be interested if the meat becomes rancid in water.