Cat and Coyote

Pictured here is a locally-taken bobcat and coyote that came back from the tannery yesterday. I'm pretty excited about them because they're for me! Not animals that I killed, personally, but animals that were given to me by customers who just didn't particularly want them. "Hey, I shot a coyote, you want it?" That sort of thing. It isn't a common occurrence, but it does happen from time to time.

Both the bobcat and coyote were brought to me in December 2014. I tried to sell the coyote after skinning it, but there was no interest over at taxinet. Let's face it, the demand for central Texas coyotes is not high. It doesn't get very cold here so their fur isn't exactly the best, when compared to their more northern cousins. As for the bobcat, while it had nice spots I wasn't sure what to do with it due to damage on the face. It's just a few small, rubbed spots on the bridge of the nose and around one eye, but that kind of damage made it unappealing as a mount prospect and for that reason I thought that selling it was also out of the question (plus I'd need to get a CITES tag for it, in order to sell it outside of TX... which I did eventually do, later, when I decided to send it out of state for tanning).

Well, I really can't stand to let a good hide go to waste. So, after the two sat in the freezer for almost a year without any definite plans, I finally decided to pull 'em out, prep them, and send them away for tanning. They're both prepped for taxidermy-- fully mountable-- but for now I'm treating them as intact wallhangers. They were dorsal skinned for lifesize, so I've stitched up the incision down the back on both.

Anyway, I'm really happy with them. They smell so good and their fur is so SOFT! Oh, and speaking of not wanting hides to be wasted, I just shipped off a couple of full whitetail hides and a bunch of whitetail backhides (leftover from customers' mounts) to be tanned. I'm hoping to sell them when they come back, all nice and soft... I'm not even very concerned about making a profit, I just didn't want them ending up in the dumpster out back.