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and tanners. O'Hare will clean and
salt-dry the hide, but then it is sent
to a tanner for the treatment it needs
to be workable and sustainable.
While O'Hare acknowledges that this
exportation slows turnaround, the
quality, he says, is worth it.
Once the hide returns, though,
O'Hare still has some fine-tuning to do.
He thins the areas around eye sockets,
lips and the nose.
"You get it so thin you can see light
through it," O'Hare said. However,
the majority of the manipulation
required is done to the forms the pelt
is stretched over. O'Hare said cats are
often quite noticeably off, a distinction
attributable to inaccurate or ill-fitting
cat skulls, specifically.
"Somebody just sculpted this bobcat
form, so it's an artist's representation
of a bobcat," O'Hare said. To
counteract this problem in his own
work, O'Hare has several casts he has
made from previous conservation work
that serve as points of reference for the
cats he mounts now.
His reference collection doesn't end
with casts; an accurate anatomy is
only one aspect of an animal's life-like
qualities. Each mount also has what
Columbus taxidermist Daryl Keyes
calls "attitude." O'Hare replicates this
attitude with a plethora of referential
pictures: closed-mouthed cats, growling
cats, alert cats, pouncing cats, sitting
cats, cat ears, cat eyes, cat paws,
and on and on. Hairless cats make
especially good references because
they show off every muscle and fold
of skin.
The process for deer is identical:
tan hide, edit form, add artistic details.
All three taxidermists refer to deer as
the "bread and butter" of taxidermy.
O'Hare says he will do a deer a day
during deer season.
"Everyone thinks taxidermy is great
Branden O'Hare investigates the fit of an eye socket as he works on a hunter's deer. No two deer are alike, so part of O'Hare's
job is sculpting the generic deer forms in places where hides may differ from deer to deer. On this one, it's the eye socket.
