Taxidermist's work is a mounting success

PALMER -- While most Alaskans couldn't help but feel the earthquakes of Oct. 23 and Nov. 3, the vast majority of us weren't called upon to fix things after the quakes. Mark that down to the fact that only a few people live near the Denali Fault and that we can't all be taxidermists.

"Lately we've been putting horns back on and faces back on. Things started falling to the floor," Dan Foster said last week.

The interview was drifting back and forth between biology, taxidermy and hunting. The subject had been -- briefly anyway -- restoration.

Yes, there is a Hair Club for Bear Skin Rugs. It's supplied from a large box of skin and fur scraps under a table inside the Foster's Taxidermy studio. The scraps are saved there so that Foster and his wife Becky can restore damaged heirlooms or repair holes or rips in hides that are being mounted for the first time. Restoration sometimes involves dying hair and gluing it into a bald spot.

"The main thing is to find something that's the right hair texture and the right hair length," Foster said pulling a variety of furs from the box to show their differences.

Foster came to Alaska after earning a degree in wildlife management from Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, Mich. He grew up "chasing white tail" and other animals in Michigan and had dabbled in the art of taxidermy. He got serious about taxidermy while studying biology. The natural history museum at CMU still has Dan Foster mounts in its collection.

"They weren't really teachers in taxidermy. They were biology professors. But we were doing a lot of taxidermy work," Foster said.

After coming to Alaska in 1978, Foster worked eight years as a biologist for the State of Alaska Department of Fish and Game. He traveled around the state in various divisions of the department. He collected harvest information in villages and all the while he hunted and fished and continued with his taxidermy.

As a biologist, Foster was most attracted to habitat changes and population dynamics. Knowing the cow-to-bull ratio in a given moose population or knowing who's eating what and who's eating who in the animal world still interests him.

"Habitat changes over time. For example, some of these big forest fires we've had around the state are good for habitat because they start a new cycle of growth," Foster said.

While still a working biologist Foster apprenticed with a local taxidermist and then opened his own shop next to his home off of Hyer Road in 1984. He and his wife Becky both work at the shop as have their children Colt and Renee. There is a bulletin board of photos from clients' hunting trips. Some are of pre-teens with there first big game kill.

Foster's Taxidermy doesn't tan hides. They out-source that part of the job. Dan said he doesn't want to manage the extra employees it would take to run a tannery. But that decision has another distinct advantage, in that the smell of blood and of tanning the hides is also out-sourced. At Foster's visitors are simply surrounded by fur and leather. The place is clean and orderly, in part because Dan accepts tour requests from teachers and children who come here to learn about wildlife.

Foster has a display room with mounts from around the globe. Some he hunted himself, others are owned by clients and won't stay there forever. One of Foster's is a full body mount of a goat called the Himalayan Tahr. It's a long-haired brown mountain goat. The horns are larger around the base than an Alaskan goat's and are lighter in color. Foster spent four days on Mount Cook in New Zealand hunting the Tahr from a population that had been stocked there from the Tahr's native Nepal.

"They blend in much better than our white goats," Foster said.

Like all taxidermists, Foster doles out advice to hunters who want to preserve a hide for a trophy mount. He shrugs off the question when asked if hunters take that advice.

"Some [hides] come in excellent shape. Some come in terrible shape … The most common mistake is putting an unsalted hide in a plastic bag," he said. Salt will arrest bacteria growth and breathable bags such as game bags are a must. Not everyone consults with their taxidermist before going into the field.

"Dan has even given skinning advice to [a hunter] on a cell phone who already had an animal down," Becky said. "That was a new one on us this year."