This is how I did a European on my buck.Heres a link to the story/picshttp://forums.bowhunting.com/bowhunting-talk/2016-buck-harvest-long-read-83717/ Anyhow to start I cut the head off the neck right at the joint and skinned out the head After I finished skinning I put the head into a large pot and boiled it for about 3 hours.If you do this make sure to periodically add water as the water will evaporate quickly from boiling. Once the boiling was done I took the head out and began cutting all the flesh and cartilage from the skull with a retired skinning knife.An old wire brush really helps with getting off the small pieces.I also periodically sprayed off the loose pieces with high pressure from a water hose. This process of scraping,cutting and spraying took about 3 1/2 hours until I had all the small bits out of the nose and brain. After finishing cleaning the skull I filled an old plastic bowl with hydrogen peroxide.After covering the bases of the antlers with tape (protection from discoloration) I lowered the skull into the peroxide until it was covered up to but not past the antler bases. The peroxide soak does two things;first it bleaches the skull and gives it a very nice white look and second it helps to remove and chunks of cartilage/meat that you might have missed while cleaning.It is possible to do a mount with the soak but the skull will probably start to smell slightly after a few days. This is after soaking in the peroxide overnight and then drying for 4 hours.I did get a little bleaching on the antlers but that can be fixed with a little wood stain. Now that the skull was done I moved on to the wooden plate. For this I used a 14 inch piece of 1x12 pine from Home Depot.I traced out what I thought would fit the skull the best and cut it out. I then gave it two heavy coats of wood stain.... And mounted the skull via a screw through the back and into the brain cavity. And bingo,DIY euro mount.Overall I have about 7/8 hours into this but I think it was totally worth my time,I think I probably enjoy looking at it more when I know that I mounted it myself.Anyhow thanks for reading,hope you enjoyed it.
Looks great! Well done. I've seen a few videos of guys using pressure washers and those seem to come out well too and the pressure washer does a good job getting all the small areas it's hard to access with a knife.
I use "mop & glo" on my skulls to seal them and give them a little shine after I bleach and rinse and allow them to thoroughly dry.
