Why Beetles?
Northwoods Taxidermy is your source for professional skull cleaning services. We utilize the most effective methods for processing skulls to carefully remove the flesh while preserving delicate structures.
Processing Skulls with Dermestid Beetles
Processing skulls is usually done with one of two methods—boiling or using dermestid beetles. We prefer beetles because using dermestid beetles to remove the flesh off the skull is much more efficient and effective than boiling.
In addition, boiling can damage skulls and destroy delicate structures. Whereas the beetles do not affect the delicate structures, so they remain intact. Dermestid beetles only eat flesh and are the preferred method for obtaining the highest-quality skull cleaning results.
FAQs
Why use Dermestid Beetles for Taxidermy?
Dermestid beetles for taxidermy are used to process European mounts, shoulder mounts and full-body mounts. The skull is the feature point of any type of mount, and one of the many valuable aspects of utilizing beetles is to preserve the fine details in animal skulls that give the pieces their real value.
Why Are Dermestid Beetles Preferred Over Boiling Skulls?
As an avid hunter you have likely read some various pros and cons to using both European mount beetles, and boiling the skull. However, using dermestid beetles has far more benefits than boiling.
One of many reasons why hunters opt to have their European mounts cleaned using dermestid beetles is to preserve the details in those fragile, honeycomb patterned bones in the nose and around the eyes. High quality Euro mount skulls will always have these portions in pristine condition. Dermestid beetles won’t cause these brittle, sensitive bones to break or warp the way boiling does. A dermestid beetle colony will maintain the paper-thin cluster of nasal bone and those small bones around the eyes that boiling and hand-cleaning can damage. In order to have the best European skull mounts, it is critical to use beetles as opposed to boiling.
All you need to do is examine a European mount that was cleaned by a dermestid beetle colony versus one that was boiled, and you will instantly notice a difference in bone structure integrity.
In addition, boiling actually locks the animals fat/grease into the bone. This fat will continue to surface for years causing yellowing, tackiness to touch and collection of dirt.
How Long does it Take Dermestid Beetles to Clean a Skull?
Clearly, boiling is the faster method when it comes to removing flesh from a skull. However, any serious hunter looking to display a pristine European mount will not be focusing on time but instead on maintaining the integrity of the animal’s bone structure.
Dermestid beetles will take a bit of time to completely remove all the flesh, and this time will be based on the size of the skull, how much flesh was previously removed by the hunter, and the number of beetles used. For a large skull, dermestid beetles can take up to a few days to a few weeks to remove every last bit of flesh.
How long will it take to completely finish my skull?
After the beetles have finished cleaning the entire skull of flesh the skull is put through a degreasing process. This process is to remove every bit of fat that is incased in the bones to ensure a pristine trophy for years to come. The degreasing process is animal and species dependent and can take a few weeks to a few months.
After completely degreased the skull is then put in to a whitening solution to brighten the bone and make the most out of your trophy skull. This process takes approximately 12-24 hours.
Boiled skull yellowed with internal grease showing after only 4.5 years
Skull boiled and powerwashed with blown out nasals