Taking care of your new trophy
- As with furniture and walls in your home, cigarette and tobacco smoke can also harm your trophies, causing yellow buildup on both the antlers and the cape.
- Try not to place your trophy too close to any sources of heat. Heat can damage your trophy and ruin your hard earned kill. This includes placing it above heaters, wood stoves, vents, or near fireplaces. Dry heat is the worst for mounts. This causes the skin to shrink and makes the hair and whiskers become weak and brittle.
- Moisture can also cause problem for your trophy. Aquariums and damp basements can put too much moisture in the air which in time will create problems for your trophy. This includes mold and mildew.
- Dust your trophies regularly. This keeps them in top condition and will allow their coats to shine as bright as they were the day you brought them home. DO NOT use chemical dusters on your trophies as this can damage the cape and cause fading in color. Also try not to dust against the grain of the hair. This can tug and sometimes pull out the hair on your cape or cause ugly tufts of hair that stand up and refuse to go back down.
- Sunlight can cause the colors of your cape to fade rapidly. Avoid placing you trophy in areas that get direct sunlight through windows or skylights. One of the worst things for a gamesman is having a hard earned trophy lose its color and start to look dull and fake.
- One new problem people are starting to experience are insects in their mounts. Moths and beetles move into the crevices of the mount, such as open mouths and ears, and can eat and burrow into the cape of your hard earned mount. Regularly check for insects on and in your mounts. If you do see insects don't procrastinate. Insect treatments for mounts aren't expensive and can save your mounts from unnecessary damage.