“Taxidermy” by Candice Corbin – SPECIAL JURY MENTION

This should be under culture, I think I submitted it in the wrong place.. “In 1956 I was 16 years old and that’s when I first started doing taxidermy. I’ve always been interested in wildlife, hunting and especially fishing.
One day I was flipping through magazines and found an advertisement for a mail order course in taxidermy. I ordered one and began to learn about what taxidermist do and how I could become one on my free time.
The first animal I preserved was a ground squirrel. It was winter and I didn’t have a dead animal to work with so a man gave me a squirrel from Tennessee. The man told me that it had been frozen throughout winter and said it would stink when it thawed out but I took the squirrel anyways so I could preserve my first animal.
Since then I have enjoyed doing taxidermy for many years and I have used the animals as a tool to help educate and teach others about wildlife and taxidermy.” – Winston Church
ALSO. Winston is my Great Uncle and was concerned about placing any types of owls in this image because they are illegal to preserve or kill now. (it was my idea to place the owl in the image not his.. I did so.. because it was not illegal when he killed and mounted this owl) AND I LOVE OWLS!!!
The owl in this picture was killed with a bow and arrow when he was younger and preserved before it was illegal to do so and so I just wanted to let everyone know that he didn’t kill all of these animals and some were given to him by Hugh Morton and other people in the community to be preserved. I have a lot of respect for my Great Uncle and if you heard some of the stories about the animals you’d see that what he does as a hobby is pretty neat 🙂

Photograph Copyright Candice Corbin, All Rights Reserved.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *