Breaking the Mold | Karissa Jones on Taxidermy, Trade School & Building Countrified Glitz

What does it take to build a career preserving memories from the hunt?

This week on the Dreaded Archer Podcast, I'm joined by Karissa Jones, owner of Countrified Glitz LLC, to talk about her journey into one of the most unique careers in the outdoor industry taxidermy.

Karissa shares how she walked away from sports, chose trade school over the traditional college route, became a certified welder, and unexpectedly built a successful business creating custom European mounts before expanding into full taxidermy.

We dive into the art and business of taxidermy, what it really takes to preserve an animal, how technology like 3D printing is changing the industry, and why skilled trades deserve more respect. We also discuss social media's role in growing the hunting community, the future of taxidermy, and the "sweet dance" every hunter experiences while pursuing a mature buck.

Whether you're a hunter, entrepreneur, artist, or someone looking to carve your own path, this episode is packed with stories, insight, and conversations that go far beyond the mount on the wall.

In this episode:

•  Karissa's journey into taxidermy 
•  Choosing trade school and becoming a certified welder 
•  Building Countrified Glitz LLC from the ground up 
•  The art and science behind great taxidermy 
•  Common mistakes hunters make before taking an animal to a taxidermist 
•  The impact of social media on hunting 
•  How 3D printing is shaping the future of taxidermy 
•  The business of preserving hunting memories 
•  Why the chase makes a successful hunt even more meaningful 

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who loves hunting, archery, and the outdoors.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

And this episode of the Dreaded Archer Podcast is brought to you by Oler's Archery Products. If you believe Bo Hunt is more than gear, if it's discipline, preparation, and respect for the animal, then you'll understand what Ooh's Archery is all about. Every arrow system is built with intention. Tuned to the individual archer and designed for real hunt conditions, not the showroom floor. No shortcuts, no gimmicks. Just durable, precise arrow systems you can trust when the moment finally comes. Train with purpose, hunt with honor, build your arrows at oozearcher.com. Honored by the bow, forged by the hunt, bound to the wild. And welcome to another exciting episode of the Dreaded Archer Podcast. I'm your host, Trey. And right now, if you're listening to the episode, pick up your phone and go to your mobile app store and download the Carbon TV mobile app. That way you can take all your favorite hunting content with you wherever you go. Best thing about the app, it's absolutely free. It's good with iOS and Android. So when you get a chance, go and download the Carbon TV mobile app. What is good, dreaded listeners? Hey, tonight we have another exciting guest uh on the show. As you guys know, um I'm doing my series where I'm combing the TikTok streets, Instagram, and Facebook, and finding people in the outdoor industry that's doing some amazing things. Um, and last week I came across a young lady that um is you know, when you think of taxidermy, you you don't, you know, you don't see a lot of young people getting into uh into that field, and uh you know she's doing it, winning awards, and uh I'm super excited to talk to her and introduce and introduce her to you guys tonight. So without further ado, Miss Carissa Jones, how you doing today, Carissa?

SPEAKER_02 1:49

Hey, I'm doing good. I'm glad to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Oh, nice, nice, nice. Yeah, I um uh I saw your I saw your page and I was like, wait a minute. You know in the past I've done shows and I talked about how taxidermy is like a a dying art, like you know, like where I've lived in South Dakota, we only had like two taxidermists in the whole state. And they were like, Yeah, we used to have a lot, and now it's kind of windling down to you know, us two is left, and it's like it's a dying art. And then to see, you know, someone young doing it, I'm like, oh, I gotta, I gotta have her on the show and and talk to her. So like how'd you get into you know this field?

SPEAKER_02 2:31

Yeah, so pretty much my whole life I've done things with animals, not necessarily dead animals all the time, but been around animals my whole life, and you know, things happen, you learn the way of life and all that. Um, and when I was younger, I did like sports and everything. So, like in high school and all of that, I just kinda lost my way and did like wasn't doing anything anything country back to my roots or anything. So when I finally put my foot down and stopped going back to my roots, I gotta get my like go outside, do something that I'm used to doing, and just started working with longhorn skulls and longhorns and stuff like that. That kind of was just like my ticket back into the industry. Um, I've kind of done a lot of artsy things all the time, and I kind of just combined the two, just longhorns and art and doing stuff like that. I made a name for myself on TikTok. That was back when TikTok was like bigger than it is now. I mean, I feel like it was all the trendy things and it was hot like in 2020 and COVID and all that. So I started posting on TikTok of my Longhorn skulls, and literally my first video got like 300,000 views or something, and I just started selling them. It was no intention of mine to make a business out of this. I was literally just doing something for myself, and I was like, hey, like I like skulls, but I also like bling and girly things, and I kind of like put them together and then somehow found my market of a lot of females out there who are like that. Um, but yeah, that kind of just made my name in taxidermy because it's technically considered like European maps. Like I was cleaning the skulls and doing all the things behind the scenes, not just the artwork. And then from there, when me and my fiance got together, he is like big into hunting and all the things like that. I mean, as a kid, obviously I really wanted to, but my grandpa was just not healthy enough to take us, and the rest of my family is so far away, it was never like it just never worked out. So I was lucky when we got together, he was just open armed about everything and kind of taking me and teaching me everything I know about hunting, and again, another artsy thing. He has all these like wall mounts and shoulder mounts and stuff, and I was like, huh, like I could probably do that. And I was like trying to make it like fun and was looking at different forms and stuff because you know, everyone you see they have like their standard shoulder mount, just a basic upright or whatever, nothing ever like fun or different, and so I was like, screw it, I'll go to taxonomy school. I it is like expanding my business, and a lot of our friends are in the hunting world, and I was like, I'll just do theirs, if anything, and decided to go to school and I loved it. I went to I went to Adventure Bound here in Oklahoma, and he's pretty big, so thankfully he's only a couple hours away from me. He's right by like Tulsa. Um, I'm not sure if you're familiar with that area, but oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

I'm in Petrian and I'm like, I'm not too far from Oklahoma. I'm always in like Blue or uh Otterville or um or Hoachatown. I'm I'm always in.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

Yeah, well, he's it's literally called okay Oklahoma. I've never even heard of it until I went to this school. I was just like, okay, like literally okay a while. But they're by Muskogee, so that was like an easy reference. And so I went to school and that teacher, Jason, he was freaking amazing. He will bullshit with you and make it fun and not make you feel like out of place and teach you too much without overwhelming you. And I was just pretty much hooked after that point and started from there.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Was it hard? Because like I've always wanted to like get into Tex Dermy. Like when I found out, like in South Dakota, that there weren't that many people, I'm like, man, I got a lot of free time on my hands and a little extra money, I could go to school, but then uh I got like I got intimidated. Like I uh there was a the only school that was close in South Dakota was in Minnesota, and how he did the classes where you would come, you like I guess go to his shop Friday evening, and you kind of work. I guess you get like the game plan for the weekend, and then Saturday you do your lesson Sunday, and then you go home Sunday night. Yeah, I'm like, man, that's that's a lot of commitment. I gotta drive out there, get a hotel, and that's that's way more expensive than I wanted it to be.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

Yeah, like our school, my school that I went to, it was only a week long. And to me, I was like, dang, like if we're able to like learn that much in just a week, I was like, it can't be that hard. And to me, since I have done art for so long and I've like drawn and painted and sculpted and done all the things and used real life things as references and tried to recreate them before, it kind of is like just something that would click for you in your head. But if you don't have the experience of doing that, I would not say that it just magically comes to you because I mean you're trying to bring like God's creation, real life into something that's a piece of foam and recreate all of that with your own two hands, so it's not as easy as a lot of people would think. Um, but again, if you are artsy, it can be easy. But if you're a perfectionist like I am, it can definitely be difficult and you'll spend a lot more time doing things that a normal taxidermist probably wouldn't do. So there is a downside to that.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

Like when when you got into it, did like your family like think you were crazy? Like, why are you getting into taxidermy?

SPEAKER_02 8:31

No, okay, so people who like personally know me, this is kind of like a normal thing, and they're not shocked by it at all. Like, for when I say sports took over my life and I could care less about sports, and you know, around here, sports is like a big thing, and in my family, sports is a big thing. And I was the type, I was like, I don't want to go to college, I want to just go to trade school, screw sports, like why even waste my money trying to go get a degree when I can do so many things without one. And so once I finally put my foot down and got out of sports, I went to welding school, learned how to weld and do all stuff like that, went to trade school and got certified in welding, and then started my own business with the skulls. And then after that, I was like, hey, let's do taxidermy, you know? And so, like, I decided to go and do taxidermy. So they were just like, this chick's always doing something, and you never know. And it's it's completely out of the norm for someone who does look like me, but my family and everyone who does know me, they're like, that's so normal for her.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

You know, you said something there that uh I've talked about a lot on the show because before I got the job I have now, I used to be a student recruiter for community college. And one of the biggest things that like bugged me was that when I would go meet with these counselors at these uh high schools, they want to push like push college on every kid in in the school. And they as a community college, they really kind of I was like the red-headed stepchild, like we we'll let you come in and talk to like our bad kids, but like our our like top kids, they're going off to four-year schools. And I'm like, yeah, but do you like do they want to go to four-year schools?

SPEAKER_02 10:13

Oh, and it's a huge thing. Like, everyone wants to push like four-year, four-year, four-year. And like I was I wasn't just a someone who sat the bench and was on the team. Like, I was good at sports. I could have gone D1, I could have gone to the University of Hawaii. Like, I was out here getting scholarships left and right, and I ended up choosing D2. But if I could have gone back, I would have just gone to the community college. Gone, got my basics, like at least got my basics there and got an associates, which I do have my associates. Um, but I'm sitting here and I'm just like, why are we forcing onto like your kids to go in forty thousand dollars worth of debt in one year? And if I would have never gone, I wouldn't have had any debt like that. And it's just crazy that trade schools are not pushed more. I mean, like taxidermy school, taxidermy school is not even a trade school, like that's just someone you literally go to someone's shop and you learn how to do, and the amount of money it takes, you can save that up in just a couple of months instead of out here paying on it the rest of your life.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

Oh no, hey, hey, that's facts. Like, I would have kids come to me and they're like, you know, I really don't want to go to you know, a four-year school. I don't, I don't want to, I just want to do something that I can work. So we had these workforce courses, and that was like my bread and butter. Like, I like they gave me like the rural part of Texas. So I just had like all these, you know, kids that they grew up in blue-collar families, so they were like, Yeah, hey, I'm down. So I bring them to campus, and we're going, we go to the welding department, uh, auto body, automotive, culinary arts, um, cosmetology. We had uh um uh was it like uh programming. It's like PLCs and all this stuff, like making robots and stuff. And I was I was getting hundreds of kids in these programs. And it's like this is my this is what I like to do. Because like, you know, when I got to college, I play played football. And after about the third year, it took three years. I'm like, I don't like this anymore. Like I it's it's cool, like, yeah, I get to play on Saturday, I'm on TV, like it's dope. But like I had buddies that you know, they were they didn't play sports, and they were getting like the full college experience. Like, you know, they're you know after school's over, they can do whatever they want to do. And I'm like, man, my day is is like mapped out. Like, I'm paying, oh, I'm not paying, but I'm here, I'm here, but I'm not really getting experience anything. I'm just a football player. So I like my senior year, I quit. I'm saying, I'm done, I'm not going to the NFL. Yeah, I'm just gonna enjoy college and try to figure out how I'm gonna work now because I I used to want to do stuff with my hands, and I was told, you know, you don't make no money doing stuff with your hands, or whatever I obviously lied to.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

Yeah, yeah, there's so much more out there, and like eventually with my business, like we do so at my old high school, people do scholarships and stuff all the time, so I could eventually build up a scholarship and give to a kid, and you can choose who you give it to based on like your own criteria, and I it is a goal of mine to have a scholarship for a kid who decides that they want to go to a trade school instead of just a four-year because I don't want people to think that you absolutely have to. I mean, I am from a small town, a lot of people still know me, even though I'm not like in high school anymore, and so I just want people to see me and use me as an example that you can make a life for yourself outside of college, and that doesn't mean that you're broke, that doesn't mean that you're not successful or anything like that, but there are things out there that you can do without that degree, so I just people more people need to talk about it, more people need to set an example themselves and show that it can be done without a freaking four-year nowadays.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

Oh, yeah. Um, my daughter, she's she's 13 and she's putting all this pressure on herself early. And I I know it's not it's not coming from her or me or her mom, it's definitely coming from the school, and she's like, you know, I I gotta get into college and I gotta take the ACT. And I'm like, yo, you 13, man. Yeah, I will say she did take the ACT last last fall, and as an eighth or as a seventh grader, she's gonna go to 22, so she's she's super smart. But I'm like, but I've had the conversation with her. I'm like, hey, look, I'm like, I know me and your mom went to college, you know, we got our master's degree and all that stuff. I was like, but you don't have to, like, if you want to do whatever, you can't like like we have you set up to like if you want to go to college, cool, it's paid for. If you want to, you know, say graduate high school and want to go backpack across Europe, go do it, live your life. Like, we put in the work early that way you can do whatever you want to do.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

And so I think her knowing that's like, okay, I don't have to be as stressed about if I don't go to college or if I don't get in, which I don't think's your problem getting in, but just yeah, do what you do what makes you happy, and that's cool. And I think like you know, a lot of parents like need to have that conversation with their kid, like, hey man, it's if you go cool, if you don't, that's cool too. You can you can make a life for yourself doing whatever you want to do.

SPEAKER_02 15:24

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

So let me ask you this question here. Do you have you ever um you think about when people think about taxidermy? Let's let's go back there. When people think about taxidermy, they don't think about a young female doing taxidermy. Normally think of a taxidermy shop, it's old man in the shop, mounts, you know, everywhere, uh capes everywhere. Like when people come to your shop, they they meet you and they come to your shop, like, have you ever gotten any like weird, like look like you really do taxidermy? Or like is everybody just kind of open to like, oh yeah, she's cool.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

No, yeah. I get all the time, like people will come and they look at me and they're like, You don't look like a taxidermist, and I'm like, thank you. Like, ha ha ha ha ha. You know, like what am I supposed to say to that? Or they'll bring like their deer that's it's just their body or whatever, and I'll just like go over there and pick it up or whatever, get I'll have like blood or whatever on me, and they kind of like are like, Are you sure? Like, I got it, and I'm like, no, like it's fine, you know, or like I just like load it. I drive a little a freaking Honda Accord. I sold my MCV, I have a Honda Accord. I'm like, yeah, just throw it in the backseat, and I'm like, have a cover in my backseat and stuff, and people are like, What the hell? Like, it's so normal to me. I'm like, you don't understand the things that I've had in this car, and so yeah, I definitely do get a lot of weird looks and like comments and things. I don't know if it's just the way that I do things or the way that I look or what, but I just like brush it off, like, okay, see you when it's done, you know.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

Hey, I I I love the looks like when I first started hunting, like I was in South Dakota, and I don't like I can tell you now, there ain't a lot of people that look like us up in South Dakota, just gonna be real. So I started hunting there, and at the time all I had was the GMC terrain, and I'm like, I'm not letting nothing stop me from getting out here in these woods. Yeah, so like whenever I would go hunt, I would take all my stuff out of the car, I'd put down a blue tarp. If I got something cool, if I but if I don't, hey, it's it's whatever. So I'd go, I'd go hunt. Well, it was one time I end up uh killing two dough. Like sweet, it was the end toward toward the end of the season. I just need to fill these tags. I got two dough. So I need I got these dough in the back of my terrain, wrapped up in this tarp, pull into a gas station, like get some ice so I can put it in the chest cavity. And as I'm walking out, uh a game warden is pulling into the the uh the the parking lot, yeah. I'm like a whole snap. So I'm get I'm sitting there, I'm putting ice into the back of the in these ear. And he goes, Hey man, what are you doing? And I'm gonna I I shot two dough. I'm I'm just putting ice in to cool them off. He goes, You have two dough in that car, and I was like, Yes, sir. So he walks over and he looked and he just starts laughing. He's like laughing. He goes, Hold on, hold on. Takes his phone out, call another game warden and like do like FaceTimes. I'm like, check this out. Look at this, and this this guy's laughing, and it's like this is wild. Like, dude, you you don't got a truck. I'm like, man, look here. I love to hunt, and I I can't afford a truck right now. This is what I got.

SPEAKER_02 18:41

You make it work, you know.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

Exactly. But then I always get that one question that like um a lot of black hunters get, which is weird. People say, Do you hunt or do you hunt hunt? Yeah, and my thing is like saying it twice don't make it different, dude. I'm I'm I'm I'm a voice saying it twice don't make it different, and um, and then one of my buddies he actually made a shirt that says I hunt hunt and people probably knew exactly what that meant. Exactly, yeah. I hunt hunt and dude, Ace sold a lot of them. It's just uh it's it's wild, but you know, here recently, um I've seen a lot of like you know, uh young African Americans getting involved in the outdoors. Like it's it's I don't know if it's just my algorithm is um is getting all pushed to me now, or is it actually like a boom? Like, I don't have a uh a way to measure a way to measure it, but I'm I'm love seeing it because I'm seeing people that like say you look at them like yeah, they they in the outdoors, it's like yeah, they in the outdoors, like cats just out here doing it, and I'm loving it.

SPEAKER_02 19:46

I know I talk about that, I talked about that yesterday. I'm just like it's crazy to me because I'll see more people that look like me doing things that I do, and it's just like me seeing it, it makes me feel good and feel included and stuff like that. And so for a long time I hid myself behind the camera. Like I would show and post things that I was doing, but not show me or my skin color or anything because I was just like never seen anyone that looked like me out here doing these things, so I didn't feel relatable because you know the number one way you go viral or whatever on social media is because someone can relate to it, they share it to their friend or save it because they relate to it. But then the moment that you know someone doesn't look like you or it's not relatable to you, it just doesn't hit the same. And so it is nice that I feel like now that I post and do show who I am and what I'm doing, that it helps I feel like it helps other people. I see the comments from people saying, like, oh, it's so nice to see like a black woman out here doing these things and stuff like that, and so I know it definitely makes a difference, and it's really nice to see it myself too.

SPEAKER_00 22:13

Have you ever thought to yourself that like you might be the person that um inspires the next generation of taxiderms?

SPEAKER_02 22:20

See, and no, like personally, no. I have never thought of that because I'm just like I'm just living my life, you know. I'm not out here doing things to have that viral moment or to be that like oddball that just like changes the world, you know. I'm just doing what I feel is normal, and it just happens to be out of the norm, and it happens to be something that people don't normally see. But people who are knowing me and like more locally, it is starting to become a normal thing because they're getting to know me and seeing that okay, this is her life, and she's not just doing something to do it, you know? And so personally, I don't see myself being that, but just by doing it, I am slowly becoming that, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

Oh, yeah, it makes sense because, like when anytime somebody does something. That like changes the way people look at stuff, they didn't go into it. I oh I'm not gonna say a lot, it's absolute, but the majority of people don't go into it, you know, saying, Oh, I'm gonna do this to change the world. Like it's like this is something I like to do, and they end up doing it at a high level, and it gets a lot of attention and it inspires people. That's just kind of how the system works. Um, like people like, dude, you know, you're inspiring a lot of black archers. Like, nah, bro. I got in this because I was depressed and I was drinking myself into a hole. So I found archer. I didn't get into it to be like, I'm gonna be the first black archer. Yeah, because I'm not, you know.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Yeah, no, no, not at all.

SPEAKER_00 23:51

It's it's nothing like that, but um like it's it's it's dope though. I'm not gonna lie, like like seeing you do tax dummy, like man, I like this is gonna spark like a lot of people to do it, maybe like maybe. I don't know. Like, because I I hear it all the time that especially like these old timers, like, yeah, it's a dying art. Like, nobody wants to get into this craft. Like, there's actually like a there's like several uh segments of the outdoor world that like some people will say is like dying. That's you know, uh processors. It is hard to find a processor, especially in my talk about that yesterday.

SPEAKER_02 24:25

I was just like, like, taxidermy is mainly just older white men in their shop, you know, and that's just the norm. But now it's like with we are starting to get a lot more females, so I will say that a lot more females are getting into it, and I'm only gonna base this on like Oklahoma because I have gone to like the Oklahoma conventions and competitions and stuff like that. So just in the few years that I've been going, I've noticed like women get more women getting into it, which is absolutely crazy. But I was just talking about like the taxonomy is growing, thank God, but processing, it's like no one does that, no one's out here butchering or doing like just getting into that new field, which is just crazy to me because obviously there's a market for it, and most hunters that you know know how to do it, so you would think you know they would set that up or like make that into a business or something, you know.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

But I I think the reason that people don't get into it is because once you start that, I guess your job, uh your hunting, like your hunting goes from this to this, like you you're at the shop, you're you're cutting backstraping.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

You are a hunter, yeah. I'm like, if if you're a hunter, I don't recommend becoming a taxidermist. I will tell you that right now. I love to hunt, I love to, you know, get something in return um from hunting, but I'm not a die hard, like you're gonna not see me for the whole hunting season, you know. I just go when I can type of deal. But it works out perfect for me because I do love the wildlife, the nature, everything of it, the artistry of it, but I also love the hunt of everything, and so I get like the best of both worlds, but do not recommend if you are a diehard hunter to try and get into this field or processing at all. My fiance actually tried to he offered processing for a year. He's a diehard hunter, like every day, morning, night, everything. So he immediately regretted processing. He's just like, what the heck? I can't even go hunting. Everybody wants to drop their stuff off, they want it back in two days, three days, whatever. And I'm just like, what did you expect when you sit here and you say processing, you know? So it would be nice if, like, you know, I add that to my wheelhouse next to add because it's just like, if I can go hunt, I will. If I can't, like, I'm not over here crying in the corner. But also, he does so much more than I would to get a deer. I would not spend the amount of money that he spends on hunting in a lifetime. There is no way in hell, but you know, that's their that's his thing. I let him do his thing.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

Hey, yep. I like my my wife. She when we first met, she like she kind of dabbled in it. She went one or two times with her brother, but she's not she's not a hunter. And then we met, and our our first date was going to the archie range and shooting. She actually dry fired my bow.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

I was very oh my god. I have not done that, I will say.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

Yeah, that was that was like five minutes into the date. Like, I got her set up. All right, it it would, it wasn't like my main bow, it was like my very first bow. Something I I hit sentimental value because it was my first bow. I'm like, hey, look, you can shoot it, you know. I don't shoot it anymore. And she kind of shot two shots and she got it figured out, so I go get my bow set up, and then I heard that blah, yeah, yeah. I was like, Yeah, I turned around and do her hand was like the cable that split her hand, so she's like bleeding, but she's not worried about the the bow, she's not worried about her hand. She's like, Oh, I messed your bow up. I'm like, like your hand is like bleeding, so we have to you're gushing out. But no, she's like, I didn't really like when she she's like, I didn't realize people spend this much money on hunting. I'm like, Yeah, like this is what you're getting in, this is what you're getting into, and now she's that way. She's like, anytime I get something, oh, I gotta get something too. Like, yeah, you got a new boat? Oh, I gotta get a new boat too. Now we're not gonna go.

SPEAKER_02 28:30

I'm not that bad. Thank god. Like I sit here, and if I can go hunting, I will. It is it has turned into our dates. I swore up and down, like I tree stands scare me, like climbing on those sticks to get that high in the stand. And we weren't out here wearing harnesses and stuff, we're literally just sitting around the scene, and I'm just like, what? Like, this was so normal to him, and I was just like, This is like terrifying me. And immediately, no, I do love a ground blind or like on a platform, I'm very basic, and then he starts telling me about saddle hunting, and I'm sitting here like, so you're trusting this thing that looks like a diaper with a cord on a tree that's like the size of your leg, absolutely not, and then here I am. Now I have my own saddle and sticks, and I'm out here going by myself doing basically the same thing. I'm sitting here freaking out where my saddle, I'm over here 140 pounds, and this saddle's worth it can hold what 500 or something like that. This is what they say.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

I don't believe it. I don't I ain't seeing no 500-pound man climbing a tree. I don't believe it.

SPEAKER_02 29:42

But then I'm like, how do you guys know that this is the rating on it? And I'm just like over here checking all my things every day because it freaks me out so much. But it is it's fun, it has become a yeah, our little thing. Like, I don't he doesn't just disappear during the season. I actually get to go and be out there with him when I can, and I'm not in the shop.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

Yeah, my my wife, we don't go together anymore. Like, it's yeah, because it's she's like, You do too much, like each time she moves, I'm like, Hey, stop, stop, hey, big, and then she like takes her Kindle, so she's up there reading. I'm like, Reading, I look dear out there. She's like, you know what? I'm gonna go by myself. Like, you go, we'll we'll drive there together, and you go your way, I go my way, and we'll meet when we're all done. All right, cool, whatever. And and it got to the point where she would go without me. Like, some days I got I'm working late or I'm on a business trip, and she's like, I'm going hunting, peace. And yeah, she's out, and she has no problem. She shoots a deer, she knows how to field dress it, drag it to the back to the truck, throw it in there, and get it home, and then I'll take care of the rest. So I mean it's it's it's it's become funny.

SPEAKER_02 30:53

Yeah, I'm I'm spoiled. So fun fact, I'm a taxidermist who is allergic to deer, so I will literally break out, like it will break me out. My whole face will be swollen, my skin will be swollen. They bring me their deer. I literally have to wear gloves, long sleeves, I put a mask on, and all the things. But once the cape is tanned, I don't know what happens in that process of tanning, but once it's tanned, I'm good. Like when I'm mounting and all that stuff, like I don't have to wear gloves and everything. But raw deer from the field, I will break out. So I have gutted a deer, obviously. That was like my rite of passage. My fiance made me do it, and so that's how I found out that I was allergic because I had no idea when I went to taxidermy school, the cape was already tanned, so I didn't break out, I didn't have an allergic reaction or anything like that. And then once people started dropping their deer off to me, I'm like, can't breathe and freaking swallowing and like dying, and I'm like, what the heck is going on? But yeah, so it is not fun having to cape and do all the things because it it probably would kill me if I didn't just take a break, honestly.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

That's why I've never heard that.

SPEAKER_02 32:14

That's that's a first of animals, and obviously, how would I know that I'm allergic to a deer? Because I'm not like that's not a pet, you know? And so I didn't know. Um, and then like the times that the first couple times I did gut the deer, um, when I first got my few first few deer were in winter, so I was wearing gloves, so like I didn't know and had long sleeves on, but yeah, once people started bringing me their deer, that was not a good time whatsoever to deal with that and learn the hard way. But I don't know, something in the tanning process and the chemicals and all that, it neutralizes it, and I'm good, but fun fact for you.

SPEAKER_00 32:58

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That that that is wild right there. That is super wild. But you know, like, you know, being a taxidermist, you know, people or not being a taxidermist, people see the Finnish art on the wall, you know what I'm saying? But they don't see the the behind the scenes stuff that you know that you guys, you know, deal with every day. So what was your first deer? And I mean, and how bad did you mess it up or did you like flawlessly kill it?

SPEAKER_02 33:27

Um, my first year was at school. So thankfully he was there the whole time and helping us through every process. So my first year um was actually really good for a first year because clearly I had a teacher with me. My first year outside of school was it was for a client, so I that my first year was a commissioned piece, and I think that video did really good because I took a video of me doing the whole process, I think it did really good on TikTok, honestly, because everyone was like, dude, that looks great. And you know me, I just tried to rec like recreate what I already had done, um, and was just watching my videos from class over and over, like trying to just do the same thing. Um, but it turned out really good. I definitely needed work on the earbuds for sure. The ears were just they were kind of too big, but it's crazy that like what hunters like and notice versus like what taxidermists and taxidermists like and notice, it's completely different. Like as a hunter, like the client looked at it and they're like, Hell yeah, that looks awesome. I love it. And I'm over here like the ears look like this, the eyes look like this, or whatever, you know. And so to me, I nitpick all of it to a hunter, they think it looks amazing. But thankfully, my first one was at school. I did not try to just do something in the backyard, and it it turned out good.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

No, no, you you're definitely right about that. Like, you're seeing it through a tax derma size. Yeah, and so you you pick you're nitpicking all the things that the average normie wouldn't see. Like, I know with my day job, what I do, I go, I'm I'm a tobacco rep, so I go in and I'll have all the like if you go into a gas station and you see like the cigarette set house all set up, like I do all that. Like, I don't do it, I have people go and do it, but I have to make the plantag grounds for it. Yeah, I'll go in the stores and people be like, Oh man, the set looks nice. I'm like, nah, man, they messed it this up, this up, this up, yeah. But you wouldn't notice it, like, you know, oh, you would notice the two feet is off, you know. Uh I want brands under the sign. There's one facing outside the sign like that. I can I can catch that. So yeah, when you yeah, so if you're not in that field, you're not gonna pick, you know, you're not gonna pick out the the little nuances that people don't, you know, are gonna see, which is which is cool, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 35:55

Yeah, so it is nice, like, oh, I can like overlook some things because I'm like, they're never gonna notice. But in my head, I'm also like, the one time I don't go the extra mile on this little part, or the one time I don't fix this thing because they're never gonna notice is the one time that the customer is gonna be up there, all up in my business and notice. And so I always have that in the back of my head. I'm like, I have to fix it, like, I can't just leave it.

SPEAKER_00 36:21

Yeah, I will honestly say this every mound that I've ever gotten, I've never inspected it. It's always been I they call, hey, your mouth's done. Cool. I pull up, I walk in. Oh, yeah, it looks good. Pay my money and I leave. I don't ever like let me see here.

SPEAKER_02 36:37

Yeah, no, like when my first clients came, like I'm explaining to her, I was like, hey, like if you're gonna clean it, this is how I would clean it. Use this, don't do this, and use this on this part. And I was like, she just kind of was like looking at me like, okay, okay. And I was just like, Am I being too much? Am I confusing? She's like, Yeah, we usually don't clean our mounts, like they're just up there on the wall, and like that's it. I was just like, Oh, okay, but I totally understand that because we have all these mounts in here that definitely need a good cleaning and have been covered in dust, and so I get that a lot of people hang it up and they don't look at it like up close anyway.

SPEAKER_00 37:13

Again, so what's the best way to clean the mount? I'm I don't think I've ever cleaned mine.

SPEAKER_02 37:19

Um, so on the antlers, it's just like a wood cleaning, like pledge, like the spray and stuff, and you can even use it on the capes of your deer, but I wouldn't use it like on the eyes or anything like that. And the eyes like just use Windex um because it's I use glass eyes. I don't know what everyone else does. Most people use glass eyes, so you can just use um Windex on it, but yeah, the pledge will like shine up the antlers and shine up your cape and everything and make it super easy to just wipe off. Uh, but yeah, uh it's not nothing crazy. I just wouldn't use anything like I don't know. I don't even know what other cleaners are out there, honestly. I wouldn't use like the Windex on the antlers or stuff like that, you know.

SPEAKER_00 38:04

You know, it's it's wild, like the the text journey has like changed because I I I click mounts because I I have this thing where if I go to a pawn shop and I see a deer mount, I'm like in some like I I get I feel bad. I I I click deer mounts and I click bows. If I go to a pawn shop and I see a mount or a bow, I gotta buy it. The reason I'm not the mounts is because like, man, some guy went out or gal went out, busted their ass, and shot this deer, and now this beautiful mount is ended up in a pawn shop. I'm like, how much I want for it? Uh 50 bucks here, and then I'll put it in my office, and uh people like, oh that's yours. Nah, and literally just like you know, some I have a little plaque to the little unknown hunter, or sometimes you get lucky and like there'll be like a little plaque on the back or something. Yeah, yeah, like no, I rescued this one. Like, I can't let it sit in the pawn shop like somebody worked their ass off, and at least it'll be you know admired in my house. But my daughter, she's like, yo, as soon as you dead, these things are going in the trash. I'm like, I'll be damned.

SPEAKER_02 39:09

I'll be gonna come back and haunt her over some of the rain done by you or gotten by you.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

It'll be like that curse of Caroly Dog meme, like return the mouth.

SPEAKER_02 39:23

I just can't, I don't know. I don't I never understood people buying taxidermy, like so I see it for sale all the time. Obviously, I'm in a lot of taxidermy groups, and I'm just like, what would how would you even explain that? But I guess because all of our taxidermy here, they have a story, like, oh, this was killed here by this person or whatever, like he has his grandparents' um deer and stuff in here, and so like everything has a story, but I'm just like, I guess you could just be like, Oh, one time I was in Missouri driving by and I bought this thing in a pawn shop or something, but I don't know. I guess I just feel like I have to have some kind of connection with it.

SPEAKER_00 39:58

Yeah, I one one of my old business uh clients. Um, I ran, I managed a lot of his chains for him. He had these two beautiful bucks in his office. I'm talking about these things, they are just massive. And he he's one of those guys, he's like real hard to crack. Like when you talk to him, it's just business, business, business, and then peace out, get out of my office. So one time I had to break the ice. I'm like, hey Troy, how'd you uh tell me about these deer, man? How was the hunt? And he was like, I didn't hunt those deer. And I'm like, Oh, like, how'd you get them? He goes, I was at a uh um uh outdoor show, and this guy kept bugging me about booking a hunt. And he was like, Yeah, man, you can come to you can come to my ranch, you can kill two deer just like this right here. And he was like, How much is it gonna cost me to you know come to your ranch and hunt? It's like how about ten thousand dollars? You can get it, you can get a deer like this. He said, How about this? I give you five thousand dollars cash and give me both these mounts. So I called, I guess he called the guy that owns the ranch and was like, Yeah, sell it to him.

SPEAKER_02 41:02

So my gosh, yes.

SPEAKER_00 41:06

So he said that's a story.

SPEAKER_02 41:08

Yeah, I mean, if you got it, you got it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 41:11

Like, I'm not gonna lie. If someone came around someone's like, hey man, I'll give you five thousand a year. I'm gonna wrap it up for you, you can make it, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:18

I got it. I'll take it off the wall right now.

SPEAKER_00 41:22

Heck yeah, that's just uh that that's that's how I would roll. You know, what I was saying earlier, we don't see the behind the scenes of you know of you know what it takes to be a taxidermist. So like walk walk us through like you know how you got the business going and then like what is the day-to-day for a taxidermist?

SPEAKER_02 41:43

Um, so since I've done like longhorns and stuff for a while now, my social media has grown from that. And with the longhorns and everything, I mean it's kind of in the same realm, but kind of not because it's more like western instead of country, if that makes sense. So I did start posting, you know, like hey, I'm going to school and stuff like that. Like all of my social medias, it was kind of like growing with me, and my followers got to know me over the years, and so once I got to go to school, they all saw that, and then it was just a slow going process from the beginning because I went from social media sales and getting to know people like online and just shipping out orders to having to market myself locally and meet up with people like in town and get my name out here instead of on social media. So it wasn't super fast moving in the beginning. I was just very blessed that a friend of a friend recommended me to some guys, and they have like an outfitter and stuff like that. So I was able to get a few people from them and kind of prove myself to them, and then they put the word out for me. Um, again, it was my first clients, and they still come to me. They came to me last year again. So the last two years I've had them and I don't see them going anywhere um anytime soon. And so I really just have had all of my people from word of mouth, and that's been a huge blessing lately. Um, day to day, I am only doing taxidermy part-time, so I work a regular part-time job, and then once I'm done with that in the mornings, I go in the shop at night because obviously taxidermy is slow moving, and you have to work up your way and build your clients, and I can't just jump into it full-time with no clients or anything like that. It's not just one of those things, and so uh I will do it full-time eventually if I can build up to that, but yeah, I am a part-timer right now, only get to do it at night and then go to my part-time job in the morning and then do it all over again. Um, which I love it. I I love my other part-time job, and I love this job, so it never feels like I'm working because I just get to do stuff that I love every day.

SPEAKER_00 44:11

Right. Hey, they say if you're doing what you love, you you never work a day in your life. I don't I don't I don't believe that, but they say it.

SPEAKER_02 44:19

That's what they say. Hey, I mean, I will say that it is it's pretty accurate. I mean, I sit here and I'm very lucky that I for my longhorns and stuff like that and social media, I was able to do that full time for years. I did it since 2020. I was doing social media in my longhorns and working for myself full time, and I'm so blessed that social media has been able to do that for me. And again, social media now is getting me clients for the deer. Like, I have people out of state that are like, Can I ship you things? Can I bring you things? My clients, my first clients, they're from out of state and they still drive all the way up to me and bring me their deer. And so the power of social media, people may not realize it, but it's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 45:07

Oh, yes, social media gets a bad rap, especially in the outdoor space, because everybody's like, Oh, it's it's Blowing up public land hunting spots and it's doing this and it's doing that. And I'm like, Yeah, but you gotta take the good with the bad, or you gotta take the bad with the good. It's done more good than it has bad. And I like I believe that, but a lot of people they just they think it's all bad, like you know, it's it's made people get in the hunting for the wrong reason. I'm like, Well, you can't judge why people got in the hunting, and it's like, yes and no, it's like social media didn't make them that way.

SPEAKER_02 45:39

No, they were already that way, they probably were already doing it, and they just happen to be posting it now, and now you know, so it's just like people want to say stuff about social media, and it's just like you you just probably didn't know before, and now you do, yeah, and there's so many things that I've like learned on social media, thank god that I didn't know before, you know, and it it can be a tool for anybody.

SPEAKER_00 46:04

Oh, yeah. Hey, I am a uh I have my PhD in YouTube university.

SPEAKER_02 46:09

Exactly. When it when it's what man, let me tell you something.

SPEAKER_00 46:14

This is this I ain't never told this story before on the podcast. It's the first. So I had rented a truck. Uh, this is probably 2016, 2017, renting a truck. Okay, I just bought my house and I had to uh I was moving stuff, anyways. I go to jump out the truck and I had a lanyard for my keys, and it got onto the the signal, the yeah, signal light switch and it snapped it off. And I was like, Oh, okay. So I call O'Reilly's. I'm like, hey, do you guys have a uh a signal light switch for a uh 2015 gram 1500? It's like, yeah, we can order one. How much is it? 15 bucks. I'm like, all right, cool, hold on. So I called the rental car company. I'm like, hey, if I damn like if I damage the truck and am I you gotta pay for it? And like, yeah, you didn't because you didn't get the insurance on it, so you gotta pay. I'm like, okay, of course you didn't. 15 bucks. So I paid the 15 bucks, so I called this guy who works on trucks or whatever, and I was like, hey, how much is it gonna cost me for you to put this uh signalite switch in? It's like $300.

SPEAKER_01 47:23

I'm like, I'm not paying that.

SPEAKER_00 47:26

So I watched YouTube video, and Lord and behold, there was somebody who posted a video on how to switch out the signal light switch on a RAM 1500. What are the odds?

SPEAKER_02 47:36

Yeah, what the heck? That's the power of social media cannot go wrong with it.

SPEAKER_00 47:43

You can't, but hey, 15 bucks and a screwdriver. I pop the old one in, I popped the old one out, put your old one in, it worked, took it back, no one ever knew the difference.

SPEAKER_02 47:54

And I'm sure the amount of times that people have done that, like you never know.

SPEAKER_00 47:58

Nah, not not at all.

SPEAKER_02 48:00

To go along the lines of that and like taxidermy and stuff. I'm sitting here and YouTube's been around for forever. Taxidermy and processing, I should say, has been around for forever. And I'm sitting here trying to look up YouTube videos on how to cape a deer so I can send them to clients who might not know how. Um, and I'm sitting here and I cannot find videos on it. All of it's the same video, same way. And I'm like, that's not how I want my deer caped when they bring it to me. And so I'm like sitting here like, why do we not have more videos on this? Like, this is why everyone is butchering it because they can't even find it on YouTube if they want it. And so I made a video on how to cape your deer this way or whatever, and it's just like I was so shocked to sit here and look at it, and even like the videos that I could find of caping was like 10 years old or whatever. I'm just like, there are new ways to this now. We have a little bit more technology. I'm so shocked that there's not more out there for people.

SPEAKER_00 49:05

Hey, the first time I caped a deer, oh my gosh. Um, I like I know the anatomy of a deer. I'm like, okay, I I I know he he needs at least this much, but I was like, but I don't want to cut off, you know, if I chop off too much, then he can't work with it. So I'm just gonna give him the whole thing. I I literally like cape that Joker like a like a rug.

SPEAKER_02 49:32

The whole thing. No, people do that. People will bring it to me, they have the tail and everything attached, and I'm just like, I'm honestly, I would rather you do that than bring it to me completely butchered and too short, and then you want me to just work some magic and try to figure out a way to fix it, but I would a hundred percent rather someone bring it to me. Like on my video I made of caping a deer, I'm like sitting here, I was like, cut it, find the middle of the back and cut it there, you know. And people in the comments are like, you don't need that much skin for a shoulder amount, blah blah blah. Like, isn't that too far back? And I'm like, Yes, but I don't want you to cut it too short, and then I have to deal with the consequences. So I would rather go on the safer side than how to perfectly do it because people out here who hunt hunt don't know how to cape a deer, and I'm just sitting here like, no freaking way this is what you're bringing me right now. It's so crazy the things that I've seen in just the two years that I've been getting deer.

SPEAKER_00 50:38

What's some of the wildest?

SPEAKER_02 50:40

Oh my gosh. One, the worst one I think I've had so far. He caped it all the way up the chest, which is fine if you, you know, when you're gutting it, they go straight up the chest. Goes all the way up the chest, fine, I'll stitch that, whatever. But then it was like he knew he started cutting it across the top, and it was like he knew it was too short, and then went further down and decided to cut it further down too, so I would have more skin. So I had to completely like oh my gosh, like went all the way across the chest and then I went all the way down at the bottom, and then it mind you, it's cut up the front. So I had to stitch all that in the middle, and because it was too short, of course, that would work not in my favor. I had to cut that little strip, or I had to stitch that whole front side too. So I probably had I'm a beginner, I'm not super fast at stitching, so it took me like a full day just to stitch the freaking deer up, and I was just like, oh my gosh. He's like, and this was before I made my YouTube video on how to cape a deer. He was like, I didn't know how to do it was my first time, and I just did it, and I'm just like, in what world did you think this was right? Like, I have a strip of brisket that I'm having to stitch together right now. I'm just like, oh my gosh. So it it's awful, it's so bad. And then, you know, you get your basic people who when they cape the deer out on the back, they completely cut the entire back all the way up to the top of the head.

SPEAKER_01 52:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:23

Then I have to stitch the entire back, which that was like the old way of doing things, you know. And I'm sure there's still caping videos out there where they tell you to completely do that all the way down the back, but there are better ways. Please don't do that.

SPEAKER_00 52:39

Yeah. Is is taxidermy more science than it is art?

SPEAKER_02 52:44

I wouldn't say, I wouldn't say so. Like if you there's not like a I want to say algorithm, but there's not there's not a science to it. I mean, I could tell you how to do it, but that doesn't mean you're gonna do it good or the way that I'm telling you to do it. Um, you definitely have to have the creativity and the like artistry behind it to be able to recreate life, basically.

SPEAKER_00 53:11

Hmm. Good, because I I would think it in my from my view, I think it's like more art because like you're you're bringing this thing like back to life and it's then you got so much you know emotions, people tied to that particular deer. Uh that's a good question. Have you ever had like an emotional um ever got an emotional delivering a piece?

SPEAKER_02 53:35

Uh no, not not yet. I so the deer that I competed with was a deer that my fiance killed, and he hunted it for pretty much every day for I think a month or longer than a month. And the day he had to go back to work was the day that he killed him. And it was just like, of course, the day he runs out of vacation, and the day he he just went through all that vacation, all that hunting, day, night in the rain, driving an hour to go every day, and so it was really like stressful for him to get this deer, and I could see the toll that it took on him. Um, you know, me, I'm not that into hunting, so I didn't understand, but I also understood how much it meant to him to get this deer, and it's a huge deer, it's his biggest deer. So, I mean, you're talking a 170-inch deer for with someone who's shooting a bow, and he's seen this deer. He had, I think, like 10 encounters with this deer within 50 yards, but he just wasn't able to get the shot because the stuff he was hunting in and something always went wrong. He actually shot the deer like the second day he went hunting in October, and it was not a good shot. He usually doesn't have that happen, and so that it took a big toll on him, and he didn't end up finally killing it until December. And so that was like super emotional. I knew I had to mount that deer. Obviously, it was his biggest deer, it was a big deer for me to mount. His cape is gorgeous, double throat patch, the perfect deer, basically. And so we're sitting here. I knew I wanted to mount it, I want to do something fun, not your standard shoulder. We um did a pedestal on it, and the pedestal actually had an extended shoulder on it, so where he shot it back in October, you can see the scar um on it from where he shot it before on the actual mount. And so it is a special mount. Also, that day that he shot it was like emotional because that was the day he proposed. And he's like, Like this deer was very sentimental, like shot in October. That was heart-wrenching. He was gone for two weeks, then he hunts him day and night for like a month, and then the day he kills him, he proposes to me, and then like two days later it's my birthday, and then I mount this deer and I take it to the competition. I end up getting um third a third place ribbon at the competition with his deer, and so it was just like a lot, and now we have him in the house, and we'll always have all these memories with him, and it was his biggest it is his biggest deer, so it was a lot of firsts, a lot of a lot of milestones, a lot of things with this deer.

SPEAKER_00 56:33

Hey she then gonna be at the wedding.

SPEAKER_02 56:37

At this point, I don't think he would trust anybody, but it would be if he did.

SPEAKER_00 56:42

You know, it's it's wild, you know. You said that um it took a toll on him. You could see it, and it's it's that real. Like when you have this emotional tie with this deer where you guys are playing this this this game of chess. That's what it is. It's a game of chess, the sweet science of hunting. It's always, you know, either you're he's he's too far one day, or you know, you might spook him one day. The next day you get a bad shot on him, you think, okay, I'm never gonna see him again. Like he's ran out of my life forever. And you see him again, and it's like it's this dance, and then when it all finally comes together, I wouldn't be surprised if your fiance was right here. I bet when he put his hands on a deer, I bet he cried a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 57:25

Oh my gosh. Yeah, I was crying for him, and I'm not even like emotional. I'm not a crier for one, for two, I don't care about like deer hunting that much to cry over a deer, but just like seeing like how sick and how attached he was to this deer and what he was going through, it was just the emotions were very high. I'm sitting crying, just so proud and happy for him because I knew how much work he had put into this deer. I mean, his whole season was just for this one deer, and to finally see it pay off. I mean, it was up in Kansas, he didn't shoot it till December. Season is over in December, and so he's just like freaking out. Like, time is crunch, it's crunch time now, and he ran out of vacation, and he's just like, what a time to you know lose this deer and make this mistake shooting them early season and not getting them. And it was so it was it was very emotional that day, but he does have a YouTube video on all of it. I mean, he recorded everything the good, the bad, the ugly, his first shot. We tracked him and him sitting in the rain and like trying to get this deer, but you can see in the videos his emotion, and it sucks, but then it's good because it does pay off in the end. And so just seeing how he is with these deer, it makes me feel better that I'm able to bring these memories and these things back to life to people to have in their homes and to look at it and have whatever memories they have attached to that deer and be happy that it's on the wall.

SPEAKER_00 59:05

Oh, heck yeah! So, you know, you mentioned competitions. Now I didn't know there was taxidermy competitions.

SPEAKER_02 59:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:12

So like what goes into that? Like, what are the judges looking for?

SPEAKER_02 59:17

So in the taxidermy world, you're supposed to be making this thing look real, bring it back to life, not make it look pretty. Look pretty based on what a hunter would want. And so when I mounted his deer, I mounted it based on what a hunter likes, what he likes, and things like that. Um, I was not going to take this deer to competition because I knew I mounted this deer based on a hunter's perspective instead of based on the taxonomy world. And so I knew what was wrong with it. Um, they want their ears to be perfect, your hair patterns have to line up right, your paintings and everything have to be right, the correct size eyes and all the things, your ears have to be right. Everything has to be anatomically correct. And when it comes to hunters and stuff, they just want their deer to look like giant necks, giant bodies, make the rack look bigger, whatever you can do to give that illusion of your deer looking bigger, you know. And so in competitions, you could win with a doe, you can win with a spike. It doesn't really matter what the rack is. Um, so you're basically wanting to bring this deer back to life. Um, and the competition world is so different than what hunters like or your basic taxidermy shop.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:50

That's wild, because you would think that I mean, I don't see people getting taxidermy outside of like hunters. I'm sure people, I mean in museums, but wouldn't you want it from the perspective of the hunter? Like, hey, this is what I want to look like. This is these this is gonna be 99% of your clientele is gonna be hunters.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:09

Yeah, um, your competition piece is most likely not gonna be something that you're gonna give to a client. Um, because I mean you can make something look good for a competition that a hunter also would like, but it's just they're not gonna appreciate the things that you've done to make it competition worthy versus like making it look good for them. Um, nine times out of ten, your basic taxidermy shops are not out here sculpting the muscles on the ears and stuff like that. They're not making sure that the ears are anatomically correct in the correct place. Um, because you can move that ear forward, backward, out in whatever, I can place it wherever. And to make a deer look bigger, you want their ears smaller, and it gives that illusion that your rack is bigger, you know, or to make their like um swell and stuff like that look bigger. I mean, there's things that you can do to give that illusion, but in a competition, like they're gonna call you out on that, like those ears are not in the right spot, that neck is not right, um, your nose and all the things like are not right, and that's exactly like the things that I got dinged on in the competition, and I knew that I was going to because I based it on a hunter's perspective. Um tilting the rack forward a little bit. Because when you kill a deer, what do you do nine times out of ten when you're taking pictures of it? You're either pointing the head down on that deer or you're tilting it up to make it look bigger, and so you tilt it down, and then the rack's just slightly closer than the face is, and it looks a little bit bigger, but anatomy-wise, with that form, like the antlers and stuff, it goes at this perfect slope and how it should be. But for hunters, you guys like it tilted forward a little bit more, and it's just not anatomically correct. So, in like a competition, you wouldn't really do that, like you wouldn't do it like for a hunter that way. But I mean, obviously, you have your oddballs and um and deer and stuff. I mean, it's God's creation, not everyone's the same, but for the most part, they follow the same slope, and and it's just minor things like that that really set things apart, and you wouldn't even you wouldn't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:45

Now, would it cost extra? Like, if I came to you and said, Hey, look, Carissa, I want this this buck mounted and I want competition A1, you know, standard level. That that that does that cost extra, or does it are I just pay what everybody else pays?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:02

No, that would be like an extra thing, and uh, I will say this though, like there are taxidermists, their mounts can be on that competition level all the time. I mean, you have to look at price points. If you have old Joe in the back in his backyard charging you $400, I mean, what do you expect? Or if you have a taxidermist who's out here charging you $1,400 for a standard shoulder mount, I mean, you get what you pay for type of vibe. So I'm kind of like right there in the middle. I do a little bit more than your basic taxidermist would do, and I do some of those finer details that not everyone would do. Um, I mean, just painting the nose. I mean, some people out here, they just paint it black, put some gloss on it, call it good. I'm over here like putting pink on the nose, wiping it off, making sure you can see all the little crevices and stuff, and then putting, you know, the grays and all the different shades and stuff and blending it so then that way it looks like there's blood flow in there and flesh and looks gives life to it. But if I put the same exact deer mount next to each other and painted this one just black and painted this one with all the flesh tones and everything in it, you're not gonna know what's different, but you're gonna know something is different, right? So it's just like it's totally up to the taxidermist whether that matters or not, and it they know their clients, they know their price point, they know the work that they've done before, and so it's kind of different. I mean, it's like as a hunter, you kind of gotta play and like play the field and see what how much it means to you on what this mount looks like.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:45

Yeah, you know, my brother's first book, uh uh, it was beautiful. I mean, his I've never seen a book that his nose like it was like black. I mean, it was I was like, this is what I said, bro. You gotta one, it's your first book, but you gotta mount it because we've like I've never seen the book with this like it was like from here, it's like it was regular, like the regular nose, but then it faded down to black. It was dope.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:08

No, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:09

We take we take it to the the processor, and I was and this is before I knew how to cape a deer. I'm like, hey, we want it caped. Can you do it? He was yep, he wrote it down, everything. Two weeks later, I go to pick it up, he just lopped the head off. So I'm like, we're not gonna be able to like mount this. So I found this guy, he was like, If you give me a picture, I can make his nose look just like I'll find the cake just like that, and I can make his nose fade to that black. I mean, you know what this man did? Oh gosh, hair dyed it, he airbrushed it, like tried to like fade it. Yeah, it looked like someone took spray paint and went, yeah. That was it, and I'm like, bruh. It was so it was so bad. I I paid him because he did finish the mount, but I just ended up just taking the animals off of it, and we just did like a euro mount, like a plastic euro mount. I'm like it looked bad, it looked really, really bad.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:03

Yeah, no, yeah, in that case, I would have literally gone to the hair store and bought hair dye and dyed the hair and then painted the skin back normal to like actually fade it out. Because yeah, a lot of people they they don't realize that there's layers, there's dimension and stuff to that. And like as a taxidermist, this is when your creativity and your art like comes through. So you are able to see those tones and those layers and dimensions that you need instead of just like most people are like, oh, around the eye, it's just brown. And it's like absolutely not. I mean, there's four or five colors that you're painting with, and if you don't know, then the the things that it looks like is just not good.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:45

No, not at all. So I know you you said several times throughout the show, like you know, the standard normal mounts. So are there like different mounts that you know that are like you know, um I guess the more creative mounts, or are there people out there that's doing like making their own foam and doing their own thing that's like changing the game?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:05

There are so many new companies, it's ridiculous. Um, there's new form companies out there everywhere. There is one company that's kind of taking over everything and buying everybody out and make trying to basically make you buy from them. And I'm the type I hate big places like that. I would rather shop small, find somebody new, and try them out instead of just going with the basic norms. Um, so there are a lot of new companies coming out with new forms and everything like that. I just tried a guy the other day. I'm sitting here and I was at the competition actually, and I was having a problem with like the size of my ears because Oklahoma deer have tiny ears. And so this is the only product that I buy from this big company because they're the only ones that I could find, but the size of their ear was still too big. And so when I was at the competition, there's this small vendor there, he makes 3D printed ears, and I was just like, what? And I was talking to him, he had some there, and they looked pretty small. They're actually like he took a real life deer and molded it based on that actual deer and mold and casted it, so it's from a real life deer in Oklahoma, so of course it fits these Oklahoma deer perfectly, but it's 3D printed. He can change that file to make it as big or as small as I need, and it was just absolutely perfect, and so it's so nice to have these new companies that are actually in the taxidermy field and know what we need to create things that we need. Um, and so yeah, there's a ton of new new companies coming out, and it's great because it makes our life easier.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:56

Are you worried about 3D printing, like taking over uh taxidermy? Because I saw this guy a couple years ago at the Iowa Drew Classic, and he did this thing where he can scan your deer and they could 3D print out a mount. Now, and but it's like it's like you know that 3D printed that plastic, it's what it looked like. Yeah, his goal is that he was trying to find he's working with this company in Pennsylvania that they're gonna start making like these fake capes. That way he could print the mount out and then put this cape on this mount. Now, whether it look will look good, I don't know. I'll I I I don't know how it works, but let's say it it becomes a thing. Well, like do you think more hunters would go to that because of the how fast you get your mount back, or will people still go to your traditional taxidermist?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:48

No, I mean you see it all the time. People do complain about the prices of taxidermists, but again, like I said, you get what you pay for when you take it to a taxidermist. And the way that I've seen just in my own experience, how attached and emotional people get with their deer mounts, like a true hunter would not accept that. They're gonna want their actual deer mounted on the wall with their cape and brought back to life. Um, and at that point, like if you would have told me the first day that my fiance shot his deer, there wouldn't have been a any amount of money he would have paid to find that deer. Like when I say this with everything, there's people out here who pay for dogs, there's people out here who will pay to go to outfitters five, ten thousand dollars to go shoot a deer. There's a client out there for everybody, and so the people that are gonna be paying for like 3D things like that, or the cheap route of taxidermy, those are not your clients, and there's gonna be someone out there for you. Taxidermy is not gonna die off based on technology. I see it even on social media, those like scan your buck, get a picture of it, or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:04

I want a picture, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:06

AI, your buck, or whatever. And I'm like, if I wanted a picture of my buck in the woods, I would just get a nice camera and take a picture of the buck in the woods, you know? Like, it doesn't, it doesn't replace taxidermy, if that makes sense. And so I don't, I mean, I'm like, if that's you, that's your thing, amazing, great, you do that. It's not gonna hurt my business, if that makes sense. Um, and so that's how I go about a lot of like social media or business or anything. I'm like, you do you, it's not gonna affect me. And so that's that's how I see it basically.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:46

Yeah, because I when he was explaining it to me, I'm like, yeah, but how would that look?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:52

Because even if you put a cape on there, you're still going to have to have a taxidermist make the eye like recreate the eyes and the nose and everything. Like, we don't just sit here and cape your deer off of a skull and freeze dry it or something and just stick it on a form. Like, we have to recreate those nostrils and the things in the ears and the little tear ducts in the eyes. Like, all those things are recreated by us. It's not like like uh have you like you've seen like a cape look, right? Like when it's like not just skinned off the deer, but when a taxidermist gets it back from the tannery, like you saw it's all wrinkly, ain't it? Yeah, it's just like straight wrinkle, there's no muscles, there's no cartilage left, there's nothing left. It's like taking a sock and then just expecting it to just magically form to whatever, and it's not gonna work. And so, but again, people don't care. Some people don't care what their stuff looks like. I guess like that's not me, that could never be me, but I know there's people out there.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:58

That shit would look so bad. Now I'm trying to imagine, like, okay, like you know, it it's all wrinkly, and so then they have to like stretch it over this 3D brand mount, and it's gonna look like somebody wearing a costume.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:11

Yeah, there's no way that some machine is gonna be able to recreate that. The only way would be to literally take your entire deer and just like freeze dry it, but even then a dead deer doesn't look like a live deer, so there's it wouldn't work. So, no, I do enjoy having tools that are 3D printed or whatever, like the earliners, and there's a few other things that I do wish were 3D printed for us. Um, and I'm sure it's out there already, um, especially as fast growing as the taxidermy world is, because it's crazy. Like you started off by saying, you know, like taxidermy is dying.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:51

I would just want to ask that question, but go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:54

Like, taxidermy in the outward outside world may seem like it's dying, and I will only base this on Oklahoma, okay? I will say I'll only base this on Oklahoma just because I've gone to the conventions and seen how much it has absolutely grown in just the last two years, but social media has made a huge impact on that and helping people grow and having these taxidermy schools because without me being able to actually go to a school, and if I was just learning on YouTube, it would have taken me so much longer to get to where I am instead of the one-week course that I took, and there are shorter courses and stuff like that, but yeah, more females are getting into it, more people in general are getting into it, especially younger people. Because as a hunter, obviously we're younger, we don't have a lot of experience in getting forms back and stuff from taxidermists. But I mean, even just like our parents and the older generation are complaining now and seeing the differences in the quality of their mounts because these old guys that are in taxidermy don't care anymore. They have your clientele, they have your money, they they know you're gonna come back because you've always caught like come to them, but they know you're not gonna look at your mount when you get it back. And if you do, you would notice the differences. It's it's unreal the differences in the quality of work that people are willing to put out just because they have those clients, they're not gonna lose their money because they already made a name for themselves, and so it is crazy that people do that. Um, but yes, taxidermy is growing and it's awesome because we're all learning together basically, and we're gonna replace all those older guys who are skipping steps and just going the short route and taking people's money at this point.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:56

Yeah, you know, that reminds like yeah, that reminds me of the archery shop, archery shop world. It's to the point now where you're seeing a lot of young people opening up their archery shop because these older guys, look, man, I got I've been doing this for 40 years. These are my clients that I know or customers are gonna come in, they're gonna buy whatever boat from me. They I tell them what they want. And that's not the route to go. I've been, I mean, I've been to a lot of boat shops, and what I see is I carry this. If you want it, cool. If not, you can go down the street. And it's like, that's kind of like the bad, you know, bad attitude to have because then you turn around and hear them say, Well, everybody's everybody wants to buy stuff online. Well, you don't carry nothing.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:41

I yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:43

I want this brand, you don't carry it, so I have to go somewhere else, and you won't order it for me.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:47

And they don't care, like they're stuck in their own ways, and it's that way in everything, it's it's it sucks, but it's the way it is, and like the older generation wants to hate on us having social media and stuff like that. But I'm like, if there weren't these brands out, like if there weren't hunting influencers, if you want to call them that, out there like beasts and stuff like that, if they weren't out here showing what they're doing and stuff, like we would never know, you know, and out here recording their hunts. There's so many more people getting into YouTube and stuff like that, recording their hunts and making more friends and more groups hunting together. I'm like, wouldn't you rather us be doing that instead of running the streets doing whatever? And without these influencers literally influencing the hunting world and stuff, like there's no telling where we would be and bringing more people to love bow hunting and getting to take it, harvest an animal like that, and teaching people, you know, like let them grow, don't just shoot everything that freaking is in the woods, you know, and just those things those I can't even think of the words, like just setting those standards is really helping the hunting community as a whole and getting people out there. It it's you can tell just the past few years, and I mean, just beast is the one that I think off the top of my head, but there's so many out there helping people.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:20

Oh, yeah, and and see the the I I want to say old heads, but I'm I'm I'm 36, so I'm I'm getting up the break. But like, but the the old heads are they're they they talk out of two sides of their neck because they're in one breath they're saying, Oh, we can't we hate social media and and it's it's bad for hunting and it's it's getting too many people in the sport, but then in the very next breath, they'll say the tradition is dying. You know, we might not have hunters in the next 15-20 years. Which one is it? Yeah, are we do we have too many hunters coming in? No, yeah, well, is the tradition dying?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:56

Like you can't you can't have both, and but what it is is all the time of like the one buck state or two buck state and stuff, and it's like you it's because there's you can tell that from the older generation, you can tell if all they cared about was the rack or if they just actually enjoy the hunt because you see the benefits of yes, there are a lot of hunters, I get that, and this year in Arkansas or in Oklahoma, we raised the prices for like out-of-state hunters, and we I've seen it on all the freaking groups them complaining, out of staters complaining because we raised our prices and stuff on out of staters, and I'm like, we want big bucks here too, you know, like there's so many the numbers of hunters that come in and the numbers that are already here, like there's just not enough for us to continue to let them grow, and it's like something has to be done at that point, but people don't want to talk about the controversy of all of that and the benefits that it actually would cause if we had a draw or stuff like that, you know. Like, why does Kansas have big bucks? They're literally a one buck state and have a draw, like you can't just walk in Walmart, buy a tag, and then go out and hunt, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:17

It's really it it's a tradition, like you know, in South Dakota, if you're a resident, you don't get into a draw. When it comes to archery, you don't have to draw. But if you're a non-resident, if you want to hunt public land, you gotta apply uh before a certain time. But then if you wait, if you miss that deadline, then you can only hunt on private land. But like it's pretty much a it's pretty much a one book state in our in South Dakota, unless you you get East River, West River tags, and that's a it's a whole thing. But you can have it, you can have a one book rule, but it also goes to like the tradition. Like you know, I got buddies from Iowa. And Iowa isn't like you know, that's that's one of the you know top five states, you know, they got some monsters in Iowa, but they got the monsters because it's tradition, man. You you're not going to go out and shoot a dink when your when your dad and your and your uncles and your grandpa got these monsters on the wall. You just not, it's kind of embedded like I'll wait, I'll pass on this small guy because in three, four years he'll be you know mature and a big buck. Yeah, but you got but down here, like down where I live, that's not the standard. If it's brown, hey, if his brown is down, like my father, he's one of them guys, which I will say he's one of them dudes that he don't care about antlers. He's like, I can't like I can't eat them, so I don't care. He he would rather take a fat doug than a small buck any day. He just I ain't never found a recipe for no antlers, so until then, if I until I can eat them, I don't want them, and he'll go and just shoot you know a couple dough. But I got buddies that it's end of the season, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:02

Little fork coming, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:05

I'm like, bro, let him make it, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:07

I waited a long time to shoot a book. Like, I didn't get into hunting until me and my fiance got together because like I said, my grandpa, like his health and stuff, like was not able to take me. My family was too far away, so I didn't have anyone to really take me. And sports overtook my life and my time, so I really didn't even think about it. And then finally, once I was able to get away from that and get with my fiance, he taught me everything, and he watches YouTube and watches like Beasts and all those guys and stuff, and you know, they harp on mature deer and letting them grow and all of the standards like that. And to me, I'm like, I could care less what the rack looks like. I shot does before I'm over here passing deer 120-inch bucks for my first buck. I mean, how many people can say that they shot 120-inch buck for the first buck? They can't most of the time. And so everyone's so shocked that I was able to do that or that I did that. But at the end of the day, I'm like, I don't I want to be like you guys, I want to shoot a mature deer too, just because my first one, like, I want something that's nice and I can be proud of. And I think a lot of like social media has helped with that because more people are harping on shoot them when they're mature or letting them grow and stuff like that, and then less people are out here wanting to show off, you know, a spike when you've been hunting the past 15 years, and so that does help, I would say, but there are both sides to it.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:45

Oh, yeah. Me, I mean you got you got a couple groups of guys, you got the guys that you know they don't care. I'm going out, I'm hunting, I've waited all year long, season's open, I'm putting whatever down, so I can put meat in the freezer, and they're cool. Then you got your guys that they they rack hunters. Like, look, man, I want the big rack. I you know, I don't care if he's two, three years old. If the rack is big, I'm taking them, but then you got the guy that's you know, maturity, you want a mature buck because that's how you get more bucks.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:15

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:16

If you're shooting two and three-year-olds, you know, you're all you're doing it just, you know, the pool's getting dry.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:22

You're not gonna get you're gonna stay at the same score range, same rack size that you always, especially if you're on private. And so it did. I didn't like before I started hunting and stuff with him, I didn't realize, you know, the thought that goes into it and having your own private land and growing your own deer and stuff like that until we got together, and it's just like, oh my gosh, like this is why you guys are so attached because you've been watching this deer the past three years, and it's just like it is a lot more like relieving and feel more like an achievement by doing something like that. So it's crazy. The hunting world looking from the outside in, like, I would have never guessed all that like goes into it. I mean, I see on social media, but I mean, not everyone shows everything, the good and the bad.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:15

Nah, but most guesses, it's a lot of editing going on. Like, I I like when you when you start editing videos and then you start watching videos, you can kind of tell, like, okay, this is edited, this is edited. I've watched some there's some big name guys out that I've watched, and I'm like, the day you shot that deer, and then the picture like the day you're gonna get it, them is them is not they make the same, it ain't the same day, and but they they play it off like they just walked up on it, nah, dude, because the first video is an overcast, and you ain't no shadow on the ground, and today the sun is out, and I it's it just it looked different.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:52

So you I watch my stuff like that all the time. My fiance hates it. Like, I'll watch the same video as him, and I'm like, You didn't notice that you didn't see that this was different, this was different, and he's just like, No, like he's just into the the story of it all, and it just shocks me. I'm just like, Oh my gosh, like y'all are really out here posting this, like this just happened, and then people are falling for it.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:17

Yeah, or or the b-roll don't line up, like they'll be in the tree, and then they'll cut the deer in the field, like, bro, you hunting over a cornfield and you showing deer in a field of clover, you this is b-roll, just peace to you.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:30

You ain't seeing all these deer, but that's but that's how it is. It's just showing, yeah, like people are out here doing stuff trying to act like it's something what it's not.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:43

Oh, yeah. But I will say this though. My my standard for public land deer and private deer are way different. If I'm on private land, then I um I'll I'll let you know a three, four-year-old walk. If I'm on public land, yeah, I'm not letting a three or four year old. If he if he if he tickles my fancy, I'm I'm getting him.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:06

But no, I agree with that.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:09

A lot of people gone.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:11

It it sucks too. It's like you almost have to feel like you have to justify it. Like if you were the picture, you're like, oh, it got this nice private or public land buck, and it's just like if you know, you know, like why they pointed that out, but it it is funny that yeah, private versus public standards are definitely way different.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:31

Yeah, it's man, it's it's it's this dumb, man. Well, man, Carissa, I really enjoyed you coming on the show and chatting with me. Before we got here, I got two questions for you.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:42

And then we're gonna we're gonna roll out. All right. What would you say to a young girl who loves animals and art, but she thinks that this industry is not for her?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:54

Not for her?

SPEAKER_00 1:28:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:57

I wouldn't say that. I think this industry is perfect for anyone, honestly, whether whether you like the art side of it or whether you like the wildlife side of it. I mean, you're creating What you're trying to recreate what God made. And it is very, it is so artistic, and people don't realize the creativity that goes into it. So if I was to talk to a little girl about it, I would definitely encourage her to just try it. I mean, once you try it, you really you get attached. I hate to say that, but it is an emotional thing. You're sitting here going step by step and doing all these little things that add up and add up to slowly bring this thing back to life. And then you get to admire it on the wall. And it is so just relieving and makes you feel accomplished that like I did that. And not only did you do that, but also you're sitting here and helping somebody relive everything that everything good that goes with it. Um, I sit here and think about like the heart that goes into it. You cannot do taxidermy and not be attached to either creativity or animals and wildlife. Like you just can't, because it will show in your final piece whether you really cared or you didn't, and that will get you clients if you really show if you really care or you don't. So I sit here and I do want to encourage anyone like that is even thinking about it, try it. I mean, the worst that could happen is you hate it, but honestly, I mean, is that really a bad thing? You just know that you're either gonna go take it to the taxidermist or you're gonna sit here in the shop and recreate it yourself, and either way, you're getting a nice mount back on your wall. So it's a win-win, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:59

Heck yeah. And the last question that I got for you, and I asked all my guests this question. If someone called you today and said, Carissa, you can go anywhere in the world and hunt any animal you want, all expenses paid, where you're going and what you're hunting.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:15

Where am I going and what am I hunting? Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:18

And you can you can take your fiance too.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:20

So I don't know. There's so many. It would depend. All expenses paid.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:32

Everything.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:33

I don't know. What do other people say?

SPEAKER_00 1:31:37

I've had I had I've had everything. I've from from duck hunting, they they want to go to Canada, duck hunt. Uh, I get a lot of go to Alaska and hunt a moose, uh, go to Kodiak Island, hunt a Kodiak bear, uh Colorado elk, um Montana elk.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:53

Yeah. I don't know. I think I don't know where I would need to go. There's nowhere specific. Like there's not a location that I would want to go, but I do want to shoot something crazy, like a pie bald or something like that, or like an albino. And it could be literally any animal at this point. I'm like, I don't care. Is it an elk? Is it a caribou, whatever it might be, but something like that to be able to take something like that. And then I love when they sit there and they give the meat back to the towns and stuff, like if you were to go to Africa and stuff. Um, love that because I don't know if I could eat that. I hate, I don't really like venison. So, like I sit here and I deer hunt and he eats all the things. So uh yeah, whatever I take, I don't even mind if I don't eat it, but it would be a cool story, and then I could turn it into a rug or something on the wall.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:49

Oh heck yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:51

It's my cow rug on the wall.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:53

Oh, yeah, the the cat behind you? Yeah, what's wild is so uh I live in Texas Arcana, and right down the street from my house is this gas station. Right next to it, there's this big open field, and there's this like it's it's nuts. I've never seen a deer, but this deer is jet. I mean, he's white. He's white, white. One day, me and my uh at the time shooting my fiancee were driving down the road, and I it just caught my eye. I'm like, what is that? And I look, and it's this deer white. I stop the slam on my brakes. It is yeah, I'm right in the middle of a highway. I and I just pull over to the side of the road. But his rag, he's probably uh last year, he was probably a nice six point. But he's white, yeah. So I go into the gas station, and because it's one of my clients, and I'm like, Hey, I'm like, Y'all ever see that white deer over there? And they're like, Yeah, and I'm like, who owned that land? And they're like, Well, we own it, and you're like the hundredth person to come in and ask us about it. Yeah, if you want to hunt it, you gotta reach out to corporate, but they never let anybody hunt it. But this deer, they everybody called him snowman because like you never see his white deer around them, and then right down the road, we have a um hunts by Lake Lake Wright Patman. Last year, five pie balls were killed on that property.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:13

Oh my god, that's rare, like yeah, in such a small area, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:19

Like five.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:20

That would be crazy. I I don't know. I love that. Like the I love anything that is one of a kind, which of course every deer is one of a kind, no, no two ractil, but uh freaking piebald. Who can like who walks in your house and just has a pie bald and you could say, Oh, I killed that, you know? That would be freaking, especially like if it was an elk or a caribou or something like that. Who has a piebald elk mounted in their house? That would be bass.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:50

It's like it's like one in 100,000.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:53

Yeah, see, that's rare.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:55

And so I was like, when I because I remember when uh this dude named Hunter, he killed the first one. I'm like, Oh, that's dope. Like, well, you're gonna be the only person in this area to kill kill one, and then it was like a month later. This lady shot one, and then like right toward the end of the season, I saw three more pictures. I'm like, Where's these are all all at Lake Padman?

SPEAKER_02 1:35:17

And I hunt out there, I ain't never seen you're like, I've never seen one of these like that. No, kid, someone we knew, he was like, he wasn't into hunting, and he had one that was showing up in his backyard, and he would like take pictures of it and stuff, and we're like, What the hell? Like, why'd you not say anything sooner? Like, we'll come out there and hunt, you know? And then he finally decided to get into hunting, and then his neighbor shot it like right after. And I'm like, So you had it this whole time, you just missed this opportunity, but it was so beautiful. I mean, deer like wildlife in itself, it's like beautiful, and you have to admire it. But to see that, you can't beat it.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:00

No, I want a jet black one. If I ever like if I I if man, I I know it's rare, like to get that um that melanated gene is very rare in deer. But I've seen pictures. If I if I ever see one, man, I'm going to it's gonna be my life goal to get that's my life goal. Like, I mean, I mean, I'm I'm sure I could just dive mount, but ain't the same.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:20

I want to yeah, uh do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:24

Yeah, peep that was that's that's been a thing. People dying mounts like pink and shit, and I was like, that's not my thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:29

People send that stuff to me, and they're like, This is so cool, and it'll be like a cheetah print deer, and I'm like, that is not cool whatsoever. Like, I do archy things, but like that is just not it. That's not in my wheelhouse. You will not catch me doing that.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:46

Heck no. Do you do you have you ever looked at um Jana Waller's art pieces?

SPEAKER_02 1:36:53

What do they do?

SPEAKER_00 1:36:54

So uh it's a lady, her name is Jana Waller. She uh or Jana Waller Bear now, she got married a couple years ago, but she has skullbound TV and she does a lot of um like mule deer mounts, like the European mounts, but she'll put like you know glass and like mirrors. I mean, it's all kind of like fancy. I don't know. She auctions them off and she gets like a pretty penny for them. Like she it people love her art pieces.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:21

That's what I would do with my longhorns, um, is glass, like everyone says mosaic um stuff, but yeah, that's what I did with my longhorns, and yeah, everyone eats that up, and that's what I was talking about. Like, so my name, Country Fied Glitz, became Country Fied Glitz because when I started making stuff, and like like my longhorns is when I moved out of my house, and I was like, look, I was like, I like country stuff, but I like bling and I like the fancy spancy things too. I'm like, I need like these worlds put together, and so I was like, longhorns, awesome! Everyone has Europeans, just like basic stuff, and then you have people who like paint on them, and I was just like, I don't like that, and so then I just bedazzled one just because I guess, and then that just became my thing, and so Country Fied Glitz became a thing, and then once I started doing the deer mounts, I was like, I don't even need to change my name because eventually I want to do more artsy things, like fun type of forms, not your basic semi-sneak or full snake or whatever. Like, I want to do something fun that shows emotion, like a deer eating an apple out of a tree or like stuff like that, you know. And so my name and it's still the fun art side of it all, but also I'll have like my standard of course I'll have to do standard shoulders and stuff like that. But if anybody wants to do something out of the norm, then I could also do that, and it it's a lot more fun than just your basic things, and so yeah. Uh when my name they asked me about that yesterday, like, where'd your name come from? And I was like, it's just another way of me like putting two worlds together, because you know how many hunters out there have wives that don't hunt, or like have wives that are like a trophy wife and wants everything to be cute and pretty, and so like here I am putting them both together.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:24

Ain't nothing wrong with that at all. But this is Janna's like page, so this is she makes like I think it's a buffalo head, yeah. Buffalo, and then she does like Mule Deer, and yeah, Mule Deer.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:42

I've not seen her. I don't know how I haven't because I've been in that world the last five years.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:49

I but I she's more of a hunter than anything. She had like her own TV show and everything, and it's big. Um, I I think she does that like on the side, and then she because she does all these like fundraisers and stuff, and she'll make them and boom, they auction them off and raise money for different uh organizations. It's pretty dope.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:07

So, like when I saw your work, I'm like, oh man, I wonder if she like like looks like her and Jenna know each other, or does she know somehow we don't that I haven't it sucks because like I haven't really found or connected with a lot of females in this industry? Like I was talking to him yesterday, everyone has been so inviting. I have not felt out of place at all, which is absolutely crazy because like around here, no one around here looks like me. Obviously, I grew up in this white town in my whole high school, which it was a tiny high school, but there's probably five black kids in the whole school, and counting me, and so like around here it is I'm out of the norm, and so I've always like had those comments and weird interactions with people, but when I got into the taxidermy world, I'm like, oh gosh, like here we go again, you know. So it's like me stepping into this world, and I, you know, when you think of taxidermy, you think of old white men stuck in their ways, you don't think of people being accepting, and so once I started going to conventions and stuff, like I've never felt out of place at all. They were so inviting and helpful, and everyone was just so nice about everything, and never made me feel like some type of way, so it was very eye-opening to be a part of this community. So it does suck that there there isn't very many women that I've been able to connect with besides Ashley Eve, is here in Oklahoma. I'm blessed to have talked to her a little bit. She actually did my mount for me. That is my first deer right there. And then um over there, second book, and um, she did my mount for me. She's a national taxidermy winner and whitetail and all kinds of different animals, and so I've been able to connect a lot with her, but other than that, I mean, I really haven't, even though, again, there's so many women that I've been seeing everywhere, I just haven't got the chance to talk to anybody yet, but I know it'll happen.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:24

Oh, yeah, for sure. You just gotta reach that reach out, you know. Like I know, like when I got in this, I I've always been I'm used to being the oddball. Like, even though I grew up around a a lot of black people, I was always the oddball because I was like, yeah, I played football and all stuff, but I was like the the anime kid and the horror movie kid, and I like you know, books and writing and all stuff. So yeah, you're you're oddball. But I got in I got into archery and you know, I didn't think like are they gonna what what are people gonna think about me? I'm like, I went to all white school, and so I'm used to that, but no, it was like very like welcoming, like, oh man, what you shooting, man, and you you know, you need any help, let me know. And yeah, you know, I've talked to people and said they had bad encounters, and I was like, you know, I I hate that for you, but I can't relate. Like, I've never had anyone say anything sideways to me, it's always been welcoming. Me and my brother, we go to tech every year, and now we're like we walk in like celebrities. People are like, oh damn, they run up to us, they people know us and stuff, and they listen to the podcast, so it's it's pretty dope. So like I that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:30

Yeah, I I think there's like definitely you either have experienced it or you haven't, and it's crazy to me that people like try to tell me that I haven't experienced things just because I'm in a small town, and I'm just like, How are you gonna tell me that I haven't experienced racism or whatever in anything? And it's just like like I literally had a kid, we were friends. He's like Indian, he's not even straight white, and he was like, My dad can't find out we're friends, like I he's like, I just can't. He told me if I ever brought a black girl home, like he'd kill me and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:11

And I'm just like, You know, you're minority, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:44:14

Tell me that, first of all, like what am I supposed to say that, like, oh, okay, cool, like I won't tell him, you know? Like, I don't know, and so it's just like random comments and stuff like that, and it's just like like I'm not gonna say, Oh, that was like the most racist thing that happened to me, but like it's just like so weird, and it it puts you in this just awkward spot. I obviously ignore a lot of it because I'm like, him not liking me does not affect my life whatsoever, but I know a lot of people aren't like that, and they can't just like brush stuff off like that, but yeah, it it's so bad. So I was fully expecting it when I came into this world taxidermy industry, but it's been great, thank God.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:02

Right, yeah, you you got you guys are a a small piece of the community, and it's like we all gotta stick together.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:08

Yeah, I'm like we're gonna come together somehow, but right I found so many, like um, I think the Oklahoma, there's a Oklahoma hunting group, it's like hunters of color, and you know, it's not just black community, it's anyone of color, and they also say, like, you know, white is a color, like you guys can come too, but it is like a really nice to be invited to things like that and not feel like the odd one, if that makes sense. Um, and so it's it's it's awesome. Social media has like really opened my eyes because I am stuck in this small town, unfortunately, and I can't just go driving down the road like, hey, are there any black people that hunt around here, you know? And so thank god for social media because it connect with people that way.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:01

What what part of Oklahoma are you in?

SPEAKER_02 1:46:03

I'm in northeast, like right by Kansas. Oh, so you're right there on the border, right by the cornfields and cotton fields. That's where I'm at. Legitimately.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:15

Yeah, uh, I wasn't I think me and Courtney went to Oklahoma last year.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:22

We went to Ufala.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:24

Ufala, yeah. Ufa. You went to a 3D shoot out there.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:27

Yeah, I don't think he said it. I don't think it was that far.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:30

But yeah, um, Antlers are Oklahoma, wherever that is.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:36

I've heard of it. I can't think of where it is exactly on a map, but definitely heard of it. But yeah, I'm like two hours from Arkansas and right by Missouri and 15 minutes from Kansas.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:51

Okay, yeah, uh next year I'm hosting the first annual dreaded archer Bow Hunters Brotherhood. I don't got a name for it yet.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:03

That's a long name.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:06

But basically, like I've I've met all these like black archers from all over the country, but we like we all talk on the phone on a computer, but we've like only a handful of us actually met each other in person. So I'm getting all these guys together in Oklahoma City. Well, actually, we'll be in Choctaw. Oh yeah, no, yeah, we'll be in Choctaw and what you call it, got a Airbnb. We're getting Airbnb and gonna have like a big um retreat and just kind of kick it and stuff. So I I I like Oklahoma, it's it's right there. I'm not a I'm not a Sooners fan, but you know, I mess with it.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:41

Not into it. I did sports, but I could care less about any of that.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:47

Oh man. I like I said, Chris, I really enjoyed the show. I really appreciate you taking time every day to chat with me. Before we get out of here, let all the dreaded listeners know where they can find you on social media.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:58

All my socials are at countryfied glitz. Um, TikTok, Instagram. I have a YouTube channel now. I'm slowly posting on there, but all the things, Facebook and everything at Country Fied Blitz. I'm very lucky. Nobody else has that name, so it's super simple. No underscores, no periods. It's just all I am, but everywhere. Same username.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:24

Alrighty. And you got any last words for the people before we get out of here?

SPEAKER_02 1:48:29

I would just say go out and be who you are. Don't let what you look like, the things that you enjoy, what you might have in your head set you back because you never know who you can inspire, you never know who can look at you and do the same thing and feel inspired to go out and be themselves. So be yourself and just show the world who you are.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:53

All righty, and with all that being said, this has been another exciting episode of the Dreaded Archer Podcast. I'm your host, Trey, and we are out.