5. Now take some excelsior, or straw, or fine, soft hay, and build up a false neck of the proper shape and size to fit the skin by placing the material around the neck standard and winding it down with cotton twine (Fig. 38). It is a very pleasing task to form a neck by this easy process, and impart to it the graceful curves, the taper, and flatness near the head so characteristic of the deer. You can show the windpipe and gullet by sewing through the neck from side to side, and forming a hollow from the corner of the jaw down the side of the neck, as shown in the figure. You now have the form of the neck wholly under your control, and your eye and hand will be held accountable for the result. Be careful to make the neck much smaller than it is to be when the skin is on. The thick coat of hair makes a vast difference in the size, and adds perhaps half an inch, or more, all around.
If you are mounting an old skin that has for years been in a dry state and requires much powerful stretching to bring it out to its proper size, you will be compelled to stuff the neck with straw in the old way, so as to put great pressure upon it from within, and stretch the skin by sheer force. Of course you will lose many of the fine points, but very often a skin is so hard and refractory that it can be mounted in no other way. In working by this method the neck is stuffed from the lower end, and the neck-board fitted and screwed into place afterward.
6. Make the neck smooth by winding; make it symmetrical and true to nature, and try the skin on it occasionally to test the proportions of your manikin. There is to be no "stuffing" of the neck after the skin is once on, therefore the manikin must be made correctly.
7. When the neck is at last finished, work up about half a pailful of potters' clay until it forms a soft, sticky paste, and cover the neck with a coat of it about an eighth of an inch thick, to insure absolute smoothness.
8. Put a proper quantity of clay on each side of the skull to form the animal's cheeks, and enough upon the back of the skull, forehead, and muzzle to replace the flesh and skin that has been cut away. On no account attempt to stuff a fresh head with tow, or any fibrous material, for it is a practical impossibility to keep it from becoming too large. Instead of clay you might possibly use papier-maché, putty, or plaster Paris, if you prefer either; but clay has many and great advantages over all other materials. Plaster Paris acts too quickly to be of much real use, putty is greasy and inert, and papier-maché dries too slowly when underneath a skin.
9. Before putting the skin in place, sew up whatever rents there may be in it, and replace the cartilage of the ear with thin sheet lead, or sheet tin, cut the proper shape and trimmed down thin at the edges. Rub a little clay on the metal to enable the skin to stick to it. Sheet lead can be purchased at about 10 cents per pound at almost any large plumbing establishment. The finest material, however, and which I have used for years, is pure sheet tin, which the National Museum procures of The John J. Cooke Co., Mulberry Street, New York, at 26 cents per pound. It is thin, easily cut and shaped, and just stiff enough to work perfectly in imitating the shape of an ear cartilage. Good, firm, card-board can be used for the ears instead of lead, when you can not get either of the sheet metals.
10. Anoint the skin copiously with arsenical soap, give it time to absorb the poison, then put it in place on the skull and neck, and adjust it carefully. Fasten the lips together at the end of the muzzle by taking a stitch in each and tying the thread. See that the eyes come exactly over the orbits, and then put two or three tacks through the skin of the forehead, into the skull, to hold it in place. Sew the skin tightly together around the base of the antlers, and sew up both arms of the Y.
11. Sometimes the skin of the neck is so much stretched that to fill it out would make the neck, when finished, entirely too large. In such cases, with a clay-covered manikin, it is possible to make a fresh skin contract mechanically by crowding it together in minute wrinkles in order to make an undue fulness disappear.
12. Before sewing up the skin along the back of the neck, (which must be done with very strong linen "gilling thread," well waxed to keep it from rotting) put enough clay at the base of each ear and on the back of the skull to properly form those parts. Observe that in a live deer the base of the ear is quite close up to the burr of the antler, and it also has a peculiar shape, which should be studied and faithfully reproduced, but can hardly be described.
13. If the manikin is of the right size and shape, you are now ready to sew up the skin; nail it fast with small brads around the lower edge of the neck-board, and trim the surplus off neatly and evenly. Screw the head upon a rough shield or piece of board, so that it will stand alone on your table while you are working at the face.