CHAPTER IV.
PANELS, SHIELDS AND NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL MOUNTS.
The preparation of a suitable setting for almost any mounted specimen will add greatly to its attractiveness. If you know where it is to be placed it is not difficult to make it suit its surrounding. For instance, a head of big game for hanging in a dining or ball room is suitably mounted on a polished and carved hardwood shield. While this would hardly match its surroundings on the wall of a log camp, a rustic panel of natural wood with the bark on would perfectly suit the latter place.
Heads, horns, and antlers are usually mounted on what are called shields. Fish and trophies of dead game birds and small game on panels. Single specimens are placed on severely plain wooden bases (museum style) or on those simulating branches, rocks, stumps or earth. These are artificial, but those built up in part at least with natural objects are most pleasing.
As we can not produce the best patterns of shields without special machines we must patronize either the supply dealers or the wood working mill for such. If convenient to a mill equipped with jigsaw and moulder they can be made up after your own patterns.
Some of the sizes most used are approximately as follows for mounted heads: