Seeing as how I'm so cheap sometimes, I figured I'd try to do my own antler mount. This is the first buck I've harvested that was worth the effort.
I got a cedar fence board for about $3, and glued two pieces side by side for the plaque. I made a pattern, cut it out on the bandsaw, used a table router to pretty-up the outside edge a bit, and gave it a coat of satin poly. I secured the antlers to a smaller piece of cedar and the plan was to build up a base with some modelling clay ($1 from the dollar store), and then wrap it in elk hide or something. When the clay dried, it got all cracked up, which actually looked pretty cool. The only problem was most of the pieces were loose. So I figured I'd try to hold it all together with a skim coat of TB3. The glue ended up trapping some moisture below and it got a little mouldy underneath (mildew), which made it look even more crude
I figured why bother wrapping it? Looks kinda primitive!
The cord that I used around the base was from a curtain-holder thing, which I also scored for a buck at the dollar store. Once the rack was mounted to the plaque, I just ran a thin bead of crazy glue around it to secure the cord.
Not bad for $5.00!! Now, if I can just convince Kelly to let me mount it in the house...
