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