New angles in taxidermy
W
yatt Oakley retired from the fire department in Odessa, then became fire chief in Stamford and retired from that position. Once when he was fishing he caught a beautiful bass and decided to mount it himself. It won a prize at a taxidermy competition. Now he has Paint Creek Taxidermy in a building near downtown Stamford.
“I started in the garage at the house and my wife finally, after smelling chemicals and dead animals, told me I needed to find some other place to do this,” says Wyatt.
He works with all types of wildlife, everything from a water buffalo to a mouse. The water buffalo is the heaviest thing in his shop right now.
“I did a turkey and that was the first and last one of those I’ll ever do. That’s the nastiest thing God ever created.”
He does some unusual mounts.
“I did a bobcat and a rattlesnake fighting. That’s probably the most unusual one I’ve done. But I’ve done fox, deer, aoudads, different kinds of goats, even some coyotes. I did a longhorn with about a six and a half foot span of horns.”
Wyatt, on the board of the Texas Taxidermy Association, stays busy but guarantees a one-year turn around on his work. He has customers from New Jersey to Nevada. Once some women contacted him after they had shot a deer and didn’t know what to do with it.
“I said ok, bring it up here. I spent two hours teaching them how to field dress a deer. They just ate it up. One of them put gloves on and helped me do it.”
He gets animals in all sorts of conditions.
“I’ve had everything from a full body pig to one that’s been cut right there at the rib cage with a chain saw.”
Wyatt started handling rattlesnakes.
“We euthanize them and freeze them and were selling rattlesnakes for a dollar fifty an inch plus shipping. They sold like hotcakes. Taxidermists all over the country wanted them so they could mount them. Some have sent me pictures of what they did. One shows a rattlesnake biting a pig, another shows a snake striking a fox.”
He learned many of his skills by watching other taxidermists. The first animal he mounted was a squirrel.
“I’ve done a 350 pound black bear, a 250 pound full body pig. People come in with some weird stuff sometimes.”
He is quite innovative. He’ll mount some animals or birds on a piece of driftwood for the client to hang on a wall. When I was in his shop his two granddaughters, Kylynn and Preslee, twelve and ten years old, were diligently learning how to do taxidermy.