Want a trophy mount? Pennsylvania taxidermists share their best tips – Erie Times-News

If you want to have a deer, turkey or fish mounted, expert-level taxidermists say there are a few things you need to know before you go hunting or fishing.
Pennsylvania taxidermists competed in the 2026 Pennsylvania State Taxidermist Association competition March 18-21 at the Kovalchick Convention and Athletic Complex in Indiana.
Brian Claar, chairman of the taxidermy competition, likes the learning that comes with this annual event.
“It’s a learning experience. It’s not just about winning an award and seeing who has the best mount, which is part of the show. But even the masters here, they come to learn,” the owner of Brian’s Custom Taxidermy in Claysburg said. “You can see the quality in this state; it’s over the top.”
With trout season soon getting underway, it may be good to touch base with a taxidermist if you think you may want to have a fish mounted this year.
“Talk to them, see what they want for a trophy fish,” Frank Kotula, co-chairman of the taxidermy competition, said. He has been a taxidermist for 25 years and a competition judge for two decades.
As the owner of Frank’s Wildlife Studio in Wilkes-Barre, he likes competing with fish taxidermy and offering advice to fellow taxidermists as well as anglers and hunters. “I have three world titles, national titles, state titles,” he said.
There are a variety of ways fish can be mounted such as with the actual fish or a replica mount.
Most of the anglers are using the actual skin mount. However, for anglers who like to eat their fish or have released the fish back in the water, there are replica options. For replicas, the angler must take a measurement of the fish’s length and girth and provide photos of the sides of the fish to document its coloration.
“I can create your fish on an artificial fish,” he said.
Some anglers choose to have a one-sided mount for a wall display, and others choose a table mount where you can see both sides of the fish. “You want to ask your taxidermist, what can they do,” he said about weighing the options.
Kotula also suggests looking at the taxidermist’s website and see what their commercial works looks like and if it’s the quality you want. Some taxidermists will allow you to talk to their clientele to see how they like the work, too.
For fish, there’s a lot of personal skill and creativity involved. It’s an intensive artistic process of painting the spots, colors and layers.
For quality work, he makes casts and molds of the original head and fins on the fish that last for decades.
The taxidermist also paints each scale on the fish such as those found on a golden trout. “We’re painting 20,000 scales, but that puts the life back into the fish,” he said about the right color choices and metallic paints.
The process is time consuming. “I could do three deer heads by the time I could do one fish,” Kotula said.
The work begins as soon as the angler gets the fish out of the water. Once you catch the fish, he said it’s important to take photos to capture its natural colors while it is still alive.
If you’re not ready to take your trophy to a taxidermist, he said there’s an easy way to protect the fish in your freezer. He said to purchase Borax at a grocery store and pour about half of the box into a garbage bag.
“Put your fish in there and do a shake-n-bake,” he said about coating the fish. He said to leave the fish in the bag, cover the bag with a damp towel and then place another plastic bag over the towel and freeze the fish laying flat. “It really preserves the fish.”
For pricing, he said anglers wanting quality work should expect to pay $800 to $1,000 for a one-sided mount and then the cost of the base. “This is your memory,” he said about getting something realistic.
The cost for materials has increased in recent years and he said shipping costs have risen, too.
“Costs have gone up 20%, 30%, sometimes 50%,” he said. To save on shipping costs, he said it’s cheaper for him to drive a couple hours to pick up materials than pay $100 for shipping.
For deer hunters, Claar said proper field care is paramount when it comes to having a deer mounted. Part of that involves being careful how you move or drag the deer out of the woods. “If there’s a rough area where there’s rocks and things, it may be good to have someone help you so you’re not ripping all the hair off it,” he said.
Kotula said hunters should also be thinking about the fur on the neck of the deer. “Don’t hang the deer up by the neck as you’re only going to destroy the hair on the animal,” he said.
In addition to avoiding losing hair on the hide, he said it’s important to have a qualified butcher to skin the deer to avoid causing damage or cutting the hide too short. “If you are not familiar with how to cape a deer out, you don’t want to try it the first time on your trophy mount,” he said. For example, taxidermists want the front legs to be cut off no higher than the knee for shoulder mounts.
Once the deer is caped out, Claar said it’s imperative to get the hide to the taxidermist as soon as possible. “Once that thing dies, bacteria start to grow. And if the hair falls out, it’s either you’re forgetting about (the mount) or purchasing a cape,” he explained.
Kotula said taxidermists can have the ears on a deer pointing in different directions, allowing them to recreate how the hunter remembers seeing the deer. Sometime the ears are facing forward in an alert position and other times they are laid back as the deer quietly moves through woods. “We can create what you saw out there. It creates that memory that you had,” he said.
When a taxidermist is working on a shoulder mount for a deer, they usually have 14 to 18 hours of labor and about $300 in materials involved in the entire process. Kotula said for quality work, hunters should be looking to pay $800 or more for a shoulder mount.
Kotula said the antler point restrictions Pennsylvania has for hunting bucks over the past two decades has dramatically improved the size of antlers coming into his shop. He remembers when a 120-inch buck was an exceptional buck. “Now I’m getting 130, 140, 150 bucks as far as score-wise. It has changed drastically on the size of deer people are bringing in to have mounted. It made a huge difference,” Kotula said.
If you want to have a turkey mounted, Claar said there are several options to consider such as a full mount of the bird strutting or flying and there are smaller mounts of just the tail feathers in a fanned-out position.
If a hunter anticipates wanting to have a gobbler mounted, he said field care needs to be the top concern, and the bird shouldn’t be field dressed. Hunters should have a bag to place the bird in to carry it out of the woods. “Don’t drag it on the ground,” he said.
Kotula said hunters should also be careful after the shot when they approach the birds that may still be flapping its wings. “Do not run over to it and step on its neck, you will start ripping all the feathers off it. Let them flop a little bit until they finish off dying,” he said. “When you pick them up, pick them up by the feet, not the head,” he said.
With turkey mounts, the taxidermists have options with bird’s head. They can freeze-dry the actual head or purchase a reproduction head. There are also options to do a casting of the original bird’s head to use as a replica. “If you talk to a good bird taxidermist, they’re probably using the original head and just having it freeze-dried,” Claar said. The taxidermist then paints the colors back on the head with airbrushing and powdered pigments. “That’s where you get the artistic values,” he said about the craft. “A turkey can be many different colors,” he said about their faces.
Jenalee Kostella, social media promoter for the association and owner of Kostella’s Taxidermy in Indiana, pointed out taxidermists are creative and can make unique displays with several animals or just one.
For hunters who are limited on space in their homes, she said there are ways taxidermists can combine mounts in a vertical fashion. “They have to be creative. For example, if you get a turkey now, you can add to it later,” she said.
Some displays use a tree limb to hold several mounts such as if a person gets a triple trophy of a buck, gobbler and bear in the same year. “There are so many options, the sky is the limit,” Kostella said. “It’s so easy to put a square rod in to hold something else. We can go ahead and do that,” she said.
Hunters can provide suggestions to the taxidermist who are artists and know how to create something unique and memorable.
Claar said when you are thinking about having something mounted, it’s good to shop around and look at some of the finished work done by a taxidermist. For a turkey, he said there may be people who can do them for less than $1,000, but quality pieces can cost $2,000 depending on what the hunter wants.
“Look at people’s work and see what they’re doing. Don’t make up your mind based on your pocketbook all the time,” he said. “If you spend $1,000 on it for in your house and you’re not happy with it, it would have been worth paying $2,000.”
Brian Whipkey is the outdoors columnist for USA TODAY Network sites in Pennsylvania. Contact him at bwhipkey@gannett.com and sign up for our weekly Go Outdoors PA newsletter email on this website’s homepage under your login name.Follow him on Facebook @whipkeyoutdoors.

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