I’ve got a couple of stories of my own if it is this same taxidermist in Bridger Canyon that hasn’t been named. I’ll tell them here so hopefully someone can avoid the same mistake of ever taking anything there.
I took a bear to him in 2017, my first black bear, and had a rug done. I always do all the rest of my own Europeans for skulls, but with the bear I left the head on with the rest of the hide and let him do the Euro along with the rug. Big mistake, it took over two years to even get the skull back, at which point he gave me the wrong skull back. He tried to give me a smaller bear skull that wasn’t even close to the size skull of my bear. Well after some back and forth he was able to “find” my bear skull, which still had a tag attached with my name on it and I knew he was mine due to a chipped-off canine tooth he had on one side that was easily identifiable as the bear I shot. Quality of the skull was not good, not what I’d expect from a taxidermist, which was a bummer but it does make me feel better about the European skulls I do on my own.
Well, it took almost another year after that but I finally did get the bear rug back in 2020. It was not done very well at all, not happy at all with the quality, but at that point I was just happy to have it back.
In fall of 2017, my dad was lucky enough to take a MT mountain goat and took his billy to him for a shoulder mount and it took 3 years to get it back. Upon finally getting it back in 2020 and bringing it home, it was realized that the mount was filled with moths and had come home that way. The moths had already done their damage, laid larvae, and soon hair was falling out. A once in a lifetime mount ruined. Never tried to confront him about it, as I'm sure he would just deny it, and he also still had my goat (see next paragraph) and didn't want to piss him off and never see my goat again, but there's no doubt the mount came home infested from his shop, as moths were flying out of the mount as soon as he got home. Eradication was a nightmare.
Not knowing any better, in 2018 I got lucky and also drew a MT mountain goat tag and that fall I also took my billy to him, as none of this had happened with my bear or my dad’s mountain goat yet. For my mountain goat, I wanted a shoulder mount and also brought in the hide from the rear half of the goat and requested that he tan the rear hide just so I could keep it. Well, fast forward 3 years to 2021 and I finally got my goat shoulder mount back. He had “lost” the rear hide and told me he would try to find it, but at that point after everything else, I decided I just had to count my losses and be thankful I actually got the shoulder mount back and never bothered following up again about the rear hide.
Hearing about others experiences there since then, particularly not receiving animals back at all, in some ways I think I am one of the lucky ones, despite the nightmare experiences. Anyhow, needless to say I’d never recommend nor will I ever go back to Bridger Canyon.
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