COLLECTING AND MOUNTING FOR SALE.
Commercial taxidermy is roughly divided in two branches, custom work,
and collecting and mounting for sale. For the first you need some fixed
place of business easy of access to the public and convenient to lines
of transportation. The latter may be taken up anywhere if a demand has
been noted and a market assured or in prospect.
Travelers in little known parts of the country often pay their expenses
or even gain considerable profit by collecting desirable specimens of
animal life. As a side line on pleasure trips it is sometimes
remunerative. Woodsmen and fishermen will often find it to pay better to
preserve for mounting part of their game at least.
The sales end of the proposition is the most difficult for the outdoor
man. Such work has not the fixed (?) value of furs and meat. There are a
number of dealers in naturalists' material who aim to keep on hand a
pretty complete stock of specimens for museum purposes. Correspondence
with these will procure their want lists.
Many more deal in unmounted trophies of heads, horns and rug skins.
Occasionally an order for small and common species may be secured from
some school or college. Such institutions will often place an order for
desirable material with a prospective traveler.
[Illustration: BOOKCASE ORNAMENTS--CROW; ALLIGATOR (Fisherman from the
Everglades); OWL.]
Finally it is well to mount a good specimen or two of almost any variety
on general principles. It is astonishing how difficult it is to procure
some very common species on the spur of the moment. If you accumulate a
number of nicely done and attractive specimens it is possible to secure
their sale on commission.
As such things are apt to draw attention as a window or wall display
some druggist, sporting goods dealer or other business man may be glad
to aid in their disposal. In or near a game country the local hotels
will help advertise you by giving wall space in dining room or office to
suitable pieces accompanied by a business card. Donations to libraries,
schools and other public and semi-public institutions will keep you more
or less in the public mind.
Endeavor to fill any orders you receive even if obliged to purchase at
such rates that no profit remains.
Do not diminish the animal life of your locality by collecting
everything you can lay your hands on. It would be time misspent and
mostly unrewarded.