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I guess it's my pride that has been wounded and I need to repent. Jesus said to give expecting nothing in return. I have not lived up to that.
I’ve pitched many a sentiment on HT and been crucified by the strangers of the internet. Sometimes I don’t agree with the criticisms, but a lot of times I realize my original point was foolish, uninformed, poorly thought out, or just plain wrong. Anyone’s pride takes a lickin’ posting in here for too long. Yet at the end of the day I learn a LOT. I can count on one hand the # of HT’ers I’ve found to be truly mean-spirited.

Keep at it - I continue to enjoy your posts and especially your pictures.
 
If I were invited on a hunt with you, as part of the arrangements I'd be totally OK with you telling me before we even left "Hey If you choose to mount these birds/this animal we are going after, I'd really like to do the work."
And if i didn't intend to give you the work, I should be man enough to say "Well Joe Bob at Brand X has wanted to do a Red headed Mattress Thrasher for this show he wants to enter, and I promised him I'd let him do it."

I've been on hunts with vendors,and gotten trips to their conferences, etc. And I will only do that with vendors I am currently doing business with and intend to continue. Here recently I has a prospective vendor offer me a trip to a national event, and I demurred. Just because I didn't want to feel beholden.
 
And here I felt guilty because I had a taxidermist in Bozeman do a bear for me rather than my buddy in CO simply because the cost of shipping back and forth was going to be like half the price of the mount.

I don't care what anyone else says, I find it super weird that the person in question wouldn't have you do the work or at least have a conversation with you about why they were having someone else do it for them. E.g. my cousin is a taxidermist and really want a chance to mount x,y,z or something.
 
I’ve pitched many a sentiment on HT and been crucified by the strangers of the internet. Sometimes I don’t agree with the criticisms, but a lot of times I realize my original point was foolish, uninformed, poorly thought out, or just plain wrong. Anyone’s pride takes a lickin’ posting in here for too long. Yet at the end of the day I learn a LOT. I can count on one hand the # of HT’ers I’ve found to be truly mean-spirited.

Keep at it - I continue to enjoy your posts and especially your pictures.

I was not here to crucify anyone, but I’m also not here to board the Empathy train. As a society we seem to of lost the art of communication. This whole thread could of been avoided with a simple conversation.

Joe, we had a good trip but something has been nagging at me. I know we didn’t really talk about it but, I really wanted to mount that trophy for you but I’m bothered that you didn’t approach me about it. I am just wondering why, I don’t want this to eat away at our friendship we built on the trip.
 
I'm not sure how it is around CA but around here, it seems as most taxidermists specialize in local animals. Not a whole lot of taxidermists around me will mount a cape buffalo due to having never done one and not feeling comfortable doing so. I don't even think they'd do a sheep mount without having done a few before hand. That being said, maybe he didn't know if you did exotic game or not. I'm not picking sides. Just trying to make sense of what happened. It's a crappy thing to do for sure, but in the end just reaching out and talking to him is the best thing to do. Don't let a friendship be ruined over mounting an animal.
 
Soooooo let me get this straight....... If I asked for some info, we string up a convo, it turns into something, maybe, maybe not. You invite me to NZ, I come bring my own gear and everything...... give you the taxidermy work. I shoot a Bull Tahr, Chamois, Stag, Fallow........... were good and I can come back year after year!


SIGN ME UP BUDDY ILL BE YOUR FRIEND!!!!!!

By the way I'm only joking..... I do enjoy your waterfowling adventures!
 
One of the first contacts I made when I started hunting deer was a taxidermist. He was very helpful and gave me a lot of time to explain things about hunting in general. He even offered to help me field process my first deer, provided I shot it within a certain area (public hunting grounds) that would be somewhat close to his house. In talking about hunting in that public area, he told me a story about how he got a call from a customer/buddy asking if he could help a friend of the buddy get on a deer.

This friend was flying across country on his way home (west coast to east coast) and had factored in a 24 hour layover in Chicago. He wanted to go to a public hunting area and get a deer with his bow. The taxidermist got on the phone with the friend and basically told him exactly where to set up to have a high probability of seeing deer activity.

The friend managed to get in and shoot a very nice buck which is kind of amazing considering how narrow the window for success was. He called the taxidermist and shared the good news and was very thankful for the assist. The Taxidermist offered to come down and help him get the deer out (it was very far from any roads) and do the mount for him. The friend said he wanted to take the buck back home with him to have the taxidermy done by someone else. The taxidermist wished him luck and declined to go help with the removal.

He was put off by the fact that he had offered this hunting spot and felt he should have been rewarded with the business of doing the mount. He probably should have stipulated that on the front end and it is possible he did tell his buddy that and the buddy did not pass it on to the friend. He did get a little bit of revenge in that he had a game cart that he could have used to bring the deer out with, but since he wasn't doing the taxidermy he didn't offer that assistance. According to the buddy, after the mile long drag, the cape was so damaged that the only mount he could do was a Euro.

The lesson I took from that story is that if I ever accepted material assistance on a hunt from that taxidermist I had better be wiling to let him do the mount, which is something I had never really considered before I heard the story.
 
What goes around comes around. I have had the same thing happen to me on more than one occasion. Chalk it up.
 
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And here I felt guilty because I had a taxidermist in Bozeman do a bear for me rather than my buddy in CO simply because the cost of shipping back and forth was going to be like half the price of the mount.

I don't care what anyone else says, I find it super weird that the person in question wouldn't have you do the work or at least have a conversation with you about why they were having someone else do it for them. E.g. my cousin is a taxidermist and really want a chance to mount x,y,z or something.
 
I guess it's my pride that has been wounded and I need to repent. Jesus said to give expecting nothing in return. I have not lived up to that.
In this spirit, just talk to the guy. Y'all thought well enough of each other to go on a cool hunt together, this must be just bad communication, or not wanting to mix business with pleasure, or maybe he felt like he'd be imposing on you (for whatever reason). Either way, go talk, treat it as a learning experience.

Now, call him... report back here... :)
 
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