Paul Cales won Best in World Whitetail Deer with this mount at the 1997 World Taxidermy Championships®.

WHITETAIL TAXIDERMY

Competition
Open-Mouth Deer
Part 4 of a Four-Part Series:
Molding and Casting

by Dan Rinehart
With Paul Cales

Welcome back to the final article on competition open-mouth whitetail instruction. In the last three articles, we cast and placed the upper and lower palates. We are now ready to perform finishing work on the palates, mold position the tongue, and paint the mouth interior. We are on the final stretch so let's get to it!

1. All the hair-like papillae along the inside interior of the mouth must be rebuilt. To start the process of rebuilding the papillae, we roll tiny balls of Apoxie Sculpt. There are many papillae that need to be rebuilt, so roll a bunch of the Apoxie balls.

2. Here you can see just how small these balls are. The Apoxie balls must be very small due to the fact that the papillae are very thin and narrow. Actually, this one Apoxie ball will make two papillae.

3. The hair-like papillae are thin with a finely tapered edge. Moisten your hands with water and roll the Apoxie ball against the palm of your hand. The result is an Apoxie coil that is thinly tapered on both ends. By cutting this coil in half we create two identical hair-like papillae.

4. Here I have cut the coil in half and created two identical papillae ready for placement.

5. Each papillae is very delicate and should not be

...Continued in the Fall 2001 Issue of Breakthrough.

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