today we're going to learn how to cape your trophy few things to keep in mind
is what kind of mount do you want you want a pedestal wall pedestal you want
a normal shoulder mount let's consider that when you cut your cape
so our first cut that I like to make is start on your belly get your knife
underneath like this and you want to cut the skin from underneath coming up you
don't want to cut down on your hair that just cut the hair and makes a mess you
always want to poke a hole get your knife parallel to the hide and then you
want to cut up a nice straight line right up the center and essentially what
you're going to do is match your cut on the far side so you're going to do half
the elk you're going to flip them over you're going to do the other half got up
so we met our dorsal cut which we already started the dorsal cut goes all
the way along the spine and it's going to go all the way down to the back of
the head where we do our split wide cut to get the horns
skinned out you want to make your cut along this hair seam and come straight
back and out right here that's how you'll have your line down the back of
the leg when you skin this out for the rest of the mount you can see this
hairline well the dark hair meets the brown hair I follow my hair seams and I
think any taxidermist with agreed to that too it makes their life a lot
easier trying to cover up cuts that skin out now take your time you don't want to
cut your cape
I'm just going to finish getting this and I can mostly pull down the more you
pull the better then you won't cut holes in your hide you have to be able to know
where to cut through this layer of meat right here and it's an easy okay let's
finish the dorsal cut so we've stopped right here we're going to make a cut to
the back of the horn this way kind of cut to the back of the horn this way
and skin that around and that'll be our wide cut to get the Cape off the
head and around the horns so make sure you get all the way up to the burr you
want to get all that cape that you can and that hide stops up all the way at
that burr and you kind of skin as you go get the burr you got to cut and start
kind of cutting around working your knife again this takes time and practice
stay close to the bone I'm going to do that all the way around okay you have
your ear right here connects right in here feel the ear canal ear canal
connects right there you can see it and I get get close to the skull I mean
we're right next to the skull but you don't want to get too far up either and
cut your hide I'm just going to keep working around this burr and that's
going to take time kind of half the skin as you go to loosen up more hide here we
have both pedicles skinned out we have the caper move pull this back and we'll
fold it skin-on-skin you want to get the hair in there nasty you want to keep the
hide clean and put it skin-to-skin I'll keep your tanner or happy too and
we're going to get down we're down to the eyes we have both ears removed so
now we're going to start with the nose and we're going to do a match cut you
want to start from the front here now we're doing to is skinning out the nose on the
lips so you come in your gum line and it's cut in now this is the way I prefer
to do it and do a match cut some people might like to come all the way down from
the top of the head but I know I'm getting everything that I want
the taxidermist have get up in that nasal cavity and kind of just peel this
down like a sock you're following that bone and if you know your Anatomy this
only takes a minute so you cut through that cartilage and get to the top of the
bone there and you're just skinning that around like that I just go up as far as
I can and you're cutting the inside is there lip there the lip on the top do
the same on the other side just kind of pull that hide away and split it as you
go okay that's pretty good now we want to do the bottom you're
really careful especially careful if you're going to have an open mouth mount
you want this bowl bugling or however you want your mouth be sure to leave
extra especially on this portion and that will keep your taxidermist happy
once again kind of have this side of his lip there you got to be careful cut
right next to that jawbone down both sides you're just staying close next to
the bone follow that bone all the way down okay all the way down on both sides
and you kind of work the top now and you're just pulling that hide away from
the bone follow that inner gum line all the way down down the bottom end
you're separating that gum in that skin from the bone it's pretty simple but
never not before take your time go slow keep all your gum there look how far down
we're getting we're almost down to the corner of his jaw okay that's pretty
good I'm happy with that we'll finish the
rest from above especially since we're getting close to the tear duct here you
got to be careful that tear duct because you cut too little it can be
hard for the taxidermist to get that tucked in and look natural so we're my
knife tips right here so we want to quit we don't want to cut that tear duct
we're going to put everything back where it and it belongs keep them clean then
we're going to flip him back over and finish her off I get to the eyes and the
only sure way you know you're not going to cut your eyelids because obviously
that's probably the most important part is this eyelid because that's the detail
and that's where your eye goes to and you look at the mount you've looked
at the animal's eyes to see how natural they look so I like to stick my finger
underneath that eyelid and then you can basically feel as you're cutting through
my fingers in there and this is just by feel and we're just pulling that eyelid
up away from the socket so as we pull up my fingers right there and the eyelid is
right here so we know we're not going to cut our eyelid we can even do that
membrane so we're well below eyelid you can see it in here and feel it that's
the back side of your eyelid it's your eyelid there and I left a lot on each
side the taxidermist once again the more you leave for him the better and I'm a
specialist in eye surgery so if you need eye surgery I'll leave my number at
the end of this video and you can contact me so we're just skinned and
down we know our tear ducts right here and so we're just poking that knife tip
in and you'll just follow the bone the bone is nice and smooth do the same
thing on the other side usually you can get these out without breaking the skin
because it's just like basically a little crater it's a little duct on the
bottom but once I get in there deep enough you can see you're just pulling
on that tear duct and they're just using your knife tip and you're cutting
underneath of it and basically while you're doing is just skinning it right
outside that little pocket I mean look at that that's just a little pocket
right there there's nothing nothing special you just getting close to it with
your knife blade so you don't cut it off too small once again happy taxidermist
are your friend so it's out clean okay got the tear duct
and got the eye decided almost complete and you're going to see down here I'm
going to be meeting up with my match cut from the front pretty quick here so I
can feel the inner lip and you can see it you can see this is
you feel his teeth right here so you know that his inner lip is under there so I
just usually find that back tooth and cut it up get up and out of there and
you want to get those teeth exposed because that's where that lip is look at
that that's my match cut right there so that's complete and my match cut from
the front on his nose coming off and it's actually coming around to the other
side we'll do the same thing to the other side and that Cape is just going
to slide off just as slick as you please so we have our other side done we skinned
out the imma tear duct and we matched up with our front cut and this Cape come
right off just like that I grabbed by the nose usually pick him up lay them
out same thing skin on skin
well nice to detect the face in the ears from freezer burn I like to roll them up
and keep them in the centre especially the nose and the eye and a all that stuff
that will skin the skin roll him right up and pack him out
so there's your Cape That's how you remove a Cape from bull elk thanks for watching this
video on removing a Cape from an elk whether you apply this method for a deer
or it moose or an antelope they're all the same hopefully this helps you in the
backcountry to give yourself and your taxidermist a good quality cape which in
result will give you a good quality product which is very important your
taxidermist happy you're happy and everybody wins in the world is a better
place for more information and for more cool videos like this be sure to check
out our youtube channel Eastmans' Hunting Journals subscribe and we'll see it on
the next video