DIY European Mount

I’ve seen a lot of requests on how to do a European mount by yourself. In this post I’ll cover my step by step instructions on how I do my Euro mounts. The skull used in the tutorial was from a buck my cousin shot a few years ago. I captured these images but never put them into a blog post.

I often see posts asking how hard Euro Mounts are to do by yourself. My process takes about 4 hours start to finish. I do this as soon as I get the deer or freeze the skull until I can find the time to do it. There are plenty of other ways of accomplishing this but this is how I do mine.

Start with head facing away from you.

Make the initial cut and spit the skin behind the head and between the ears.

Slice the skin all the way down to the nose.

Slice away the skin and peel it back to the ears.

Do this to both sides.

Slice around the antlers.

You can place your knife perpendicular to the antlers base and just push down. Do this the whole way around the base.

Grab the skin and pull back and slice away the meat and fat from the ears.

Do this to both sides.

Take your knife and slice along the inside of the jaw bone. Follow this down to where the jaw bones come together. Remove tongue.

Cut away the cheek meat that runs between the eye socket area and jaw bone.

Pull down on bottom jaw and continue to remove meat.

Once the jaw is removed I take my knife and screw driver and scrape away at the inside of the brain cavity. Remove the eyeballs.

I then take the skull and pressure wash the meat off. Be sure to blast inside of brain cavity.

Get as much as you can off with the pressure washer. IMO the more meat/fat you get off before you put it in the pot, the brighter your skull will turn out.

I bring a pot of water to a boil and add a generous amount of DAWN and peroxide.

I reduce the heat to just below boiling. I’ve found that when I let it at a rolling boil it makes the lower nose area want to fall out. About ever 20 minutes I remove the skull and continue to remove more meat and other tissue.

I hit the skull with a pressure washer again once I am happy with my picking then hang it in a sunny place. I’ll put peroxide on the skull every so often.

After a day or so this is what you end up with. The pressure washer is such a great tool to have. You can do it without but it requires a lot more time and effort.

I love doing euro mounts and think they are a great DIY project. I like to do these the day after I harvest the deer. Being from Pennsylvania it’s a great project for Sundays. I’ve done quite a few of these over the years and have never had any issues with the white fading. I credit that to getting as much of the meat and fat off prior to having the skull hit the hot water. I love doing things on my own and hope that this blog post can help you if you are thinking of giving it a try this year.