Skull collectors?

[Ginevive]

Is there anyone out there who collects skulls and bones? I do and was just wondering. I found a nice whitetail buck skull with little nubs that I am letting age in the woods because it still had some "yucky stuff" in it.. other ones we have are a turtle, squirrel, fox, coyote, several deer, cattle, frog (had a horned frog that died; I buried it and stumbled upon its skull in the garden the next year!) I will post some pics tomorrow if anyone shares this interest. Why do I like collecting them? I find them in the woods and I just can't leave them there.. and they make awesome subjects for drawing and painting.
Some that i want in the future: ram's with horns, and a horse.

[stangs13]

I want some snake skulls, gators and crocs too! So I am intrested in skulls, i would love to see pics of it! Horned frogs have huge powerfull jaws, and I want to see what they look like.

[slartibartfast]

I have several; they are pretty neat. Raccoon, opossum, squirrel, woodchuck, snapping turtle, deer, cat, and my favorite goat. I also have an entire Eastern box turtle who got trapped in an abandoned barn and died and dessicated.

http://skullsunlimited.com is a great place to browse pics if you are uncertain on an ID.

[recycling goddess]

i have a bunch... bear, coyote, otter, deer, and lynx... i definitely want more though. i'm hoping my mom is leaving her collection to me... as i doubt she'll give them up - she loves them as much as i do.

if anyone is interested... she does sell some

[Sasquatch Art]

About two years ago I only had a skull of a raccoon and bobcat. I went through a time of moving a lot and they, along with many other belongings, were lost.

I would love to get back into it though. They always come in handy with drawing/sculpting.

[monk90222]

I have a Wildebeast skull from Africa, with horns and all...I love it...I would love a big cat skull, I think those teeth would look wicked!

[Ginevive]

Cool! There are other skull collectors out there I'll post some pics today after work; I plan on going out and getting that buck skull, and if there are any nasties in it still, I will just hose it out.
I am not a fan of chemical bleaching them. Gives them that unnatural look.. but sun-bleached is awesome looking.

[Ginevive]

Here are a bunch of pics. I am a bit mad now because I can't find the frog nor the turtle skull; I think that they might have fallen behind my shelf but it is hard to move. :/

Feline. Mark found this poor cat under a house he was working on (it was already "clean" from natural decomposition and I lightly bleached it.)


Next is a fox we found in Canada and imported. I glued the teeth in upside down.


Dog? Coyote? Not sure; found out behind the barn with full skeleton. I don't really focus on other bones, just skulls. Check out those canines!


Doe with intact jawbones. One that Mark got a few years back to fill the freezer; she was huge!


New addition! Please forgive my dirty utility sink and its water deposits.. I found this guy out in the woods on the border where we have a bunch of poachers. He had shed his antlers before death; they were not sawed off. plan on mounting some of Mark's cutoff antlers on here with Gapoxio.. more on that later. I am bleaching this because there was a spider egg-sac inside.


Here are some antlers for ya's.

I feel really blessed to have found these. sheds are a very rare find, around here anyways. I found one and the other was about 5 feet away. They were chewed on by forest creatures but this adds to their charm


Mark's buck antlers from 2005. Unfortunately we wanted to get the head mounted but were in a financial bind. The skull went bad so we sawed off the "horns." Meat was great though.



A skull-cap mount we got from a weird old lady whose son had slew it with a bow and arrow and soon-after died in a car crash.



A doe skull I found on the roadside (stuck in a tree!) and painted with Native American art.


"Horns"

[recycling goddess]

nice collection!

[Ginevive]

Thanks Nothing like bringing nature, indoors. I always laugh when people use "natural texture" paints, and stuff bought at stores that mimics nature. Why not just bring actual nature in instead?