Ep. 66: How to Do Your Own European Mounts
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As a guide and hunter, I've spent thousands of days in the field. This show is about translating my hard-won experiences into tips and tactics that'll get you closer to your ultimate goal, success in the field. I'm Remy Warren. This is Cutting the Distance. ♪

Welcome back, everybody. Hopefully, maybe some of you out there have found some success. And if you have, maybe you're wondering, now what do I do with the skull and antlers? Maybe you aren't going to mount it, but you want to present it in an awesome way. So doing what is called a European mount is a really popular option. Now, you can obviously take it to a taxidermist, have it done. But for those of you that might want to do it yourself, or maybe you're traveling to another state, you got something and you can't bring brain matter back across state lines, you

This week, I'm going to give you some tips on how to properly, we'll call it boil out at elk skull or European and elk skull. And then I'm going to also give you tips for transporting or traveling back home and options that you might have that you don't have to travel with brain matter and you can do it yourself without having to drop it off at a taxidermist. But before we do that, I'm going to tell you a little bit of my journey when it comes to boiling out skulls or cleaning up a big game skull.

I've definitely come a long way when it comes to cleaning up skulls or doing a DIY European mount. Now you call it a European mount, I think it's probably just because you see those old school castles with a bunch of skulls with the antlers on it. What I'm talking about is just the skull and the antlers all attached, not skull capping it, not cutting the top off. It's just the whole skull cleaned up, often whitened in some way, and then hung up for display.

My journey of what I like to refer to it as boiling the skulls, but we'll talk about that a little bit later on. My journey of cleaning skulls or DIY European mounts is

started off a little rough. There wasn't a lot of information on it and I didn't really know what I was doing. And because of it, I messed up quite a few starting out. But over the years, I've done a lot. I've been very fortunate to travel to many places where I actually have to clean up the skulls before I bring them back, make sure there's no meat, make sure they're taken care of properly to get everything back to wherever I'm hunting from and to. I remember the first time I got started hunting,

in cleaning up my own skulls. I used to just take them to a taxidermist and it just started getting expensive. And I thought, okay, I'm just going to try this myself. Can't be that difficult.

it was fairly difficult because I didn't really know what I was doing. So there's a lot of trial and error over the years. I've done a lot of these, but when I first started out, it was like, okay, I got a turkey frying pot. I actually, this elk school that I first started with didn't work on that. So I ended up getting like a big tub from Ace Hardware, putting it on the burner, filling it up with water. I watched it not knowing how long it would take. And the first one actually turned out pretty good.

I ended up using a combination of just regular hydrogen peroxide that you put on a cut and white toothpaste to clean the skull up. But over the years, I found that that wasn't the best solution or the best way. Now, this one particular, after I kind of started, my brother and my dad were out hunting and our buddy Art, and Art ended up shooting this bull. And like, it was a fairly far shot. And he ended up shooting it like right through the eye.

So the bowl dropped and we thought, oh, this will be a cool, like my dad got a bowl as well. So we were going to boil out art school. I think my brother Jason's school and my dad's school. And we were going to do it kind of like as a, as a Christmas gift, kind of like have this all done for them. We had this whole idea of like a little bit of a write-up with the skulls and everything and kind of make it like a nice Christmas gift. So my brother Jason and I were like, okay, let's do this. We kind of had a little bit of a system at this point.

And it was like, okay, these bowls are like, this is like a special bowl. So we're going to just do a really good job on it, of course. But we also didn't really know like how long to boil things, whatever. So we had the skulls in the pot and we start the boil going and it's really cold this day. And it just seems like it's taking forever. So we've got the fire cranked up on the burner. We're doing things around the house. And I'm like, yeah, you know, Jason's like, okay, I got this. We're good. And then I leave.

And then something happened. Jason kind of forgot about it, ended up leaving as well. Later on, we both kind of remembered, hey, you turned the pot off, right? She's like, no, I thought you turned the pot off. No, I didn't turn the pot off. We're like, oh crap. So we rushed back to the pot and sure enough, we left the thing on full burning for hours.

Pretty much all the water had evaporated out of the pot and now the antlers were leaning up against this metal giant pot and the skull as well just cooking and burning. It had pretty much burnt through all three elk skulls like the antlers were barely on there. It burnt through the pack. The skulls were now disintegrating in what was left of a dry burning pot and

And needless to say, our European mounts, our special Merry Christmas gift, look what we made you. We just destroyed pretty much these three awesome bull elk with a pretty good story attached to it. Now, since that moment, I have taken a lot more care and paid a lot more attention when it comes to cleaning up and doing my own DIY European mount.

Now, whether you want to clean a skull because you just want to hang it up in your house, whether you have to because you're going to travel across state lines and can't bring any brain or spinal material because of CWD rules, or maybe you just think it's going to be kind of a fun project to do. I think, you know, out of the animals that I take, most of them, I end up cleaning up the skulls, leaving the skull hole and doing what I would consider a year amount on it.

It's fun for me in some ways. It's also just kind of like it looks nice and it's a good way to display it, hang it up. You can kind of put it anywhere. It's actually becoming really popular in home decor these days. Even non-hunters are like, Ooh, I'd really like a, you know, if you get an extra skull, I'd really like that. I'm like, no, the ones that I take, I'm keeping for myself. But if I find one, you know, maybe I'll clean it up, bleach it out for you and maybe restain the horns or something, some dead head or something like that. But

you know, as hunters, I think many non hunters don't really understand the fact that

They're like, oh, you take the antlers or whatever. And it's like this trophy, but it's more than that. It's looking at those memories. It's hanging it up and making kind of a, in my opinion, it's just kind of a way to honor that animal. And you look at it, you remember that hunt after the meat's long gone. You've got those antlers there, those horns, whatever. And, you know, it just helps bring that adventure, that experience, that everything back to life. And I really think that it's kind of like,

part of being a hunter. You look at those and you understand it's not something you can easily explain to someone else. But I think that the European mount or a cleaned out skull is a great way to showcase that animal. And maybe you don't have room for a shoulder mount or maybe whatever. It's just, it's a good way to do it. Now, before I start this podcast, I'm going to say that

First off, I'm not a licensed taxidermist, but I have done a lot of skulls and many of them turn out really good. And that's because I have kind of a little formula that I use. It's probably not the best formula out there, but it works for me and it will probably work for you. I think that expression, there's more than one way to skin a cat should be, there's more than one way to Euro mount a skull. Every time I do one, somebody else offers up a better way to do it.

which is fine. I have tried hundreds of different tactics and I just kind of found the one that works for me, one that I think is the easiest, the fastest and has good longevity or good life for the skull, not drying out, not falling apart, not being too much of a pain. So I'm going to give you kind of my, the way that I do it. I'll give you also some other alternatives, some other options, because as soon as I do this, people are going to be like, well, you should have just buried it in the

You know, in the South, it seems to work all right. There's certain animals I wouldn't do that with because you do that, the antlers get bleached out, depending on what it is, you know, horns or antlers. Like, it's just not a way that works here, especially in the wintertime when everything's dormant. And for most of the West, it's just not like a feasible way. Also...

When they're done, they're dirty and pretty greasy. They don't really clean up well, in my opinion. So that's just not a way that I do. I've used dermocytobetals before. Those are really good. What that is, they're actually like scarab beetle larva or something like that. The trouble with that is you got to keep the things alive. They stink really, really, really bad. If somebody else has them, that right there is the best way to clean up your school.

But it's a time investment. You got to have a box for them. You got to feed them continually. You have to have like heat lamps in there and power. And you have to have just a bunch of rotting, nasty stuff that stinks really bad. I cannot express how bad those things stink. They are, in my opinion, the best way to clean a skull. But they also are not the easiest, most feasible way. Like you can't travel with them. You can't.

You know, not everybody has them. You might live in a cold climate. They're kind of could be difficult to keep alive if your power goes out or whatever. There's just a lot of downsides to them. But if somebody you know has them or whatever, that's a great way. If you're going to pay someone to do it, that's probably the best option to do because it's going to come out probably the best. The way that I do it is I call it boiling the skull, but you don't necessarily want to boil it. Maybe it's just, you know, you're putting it in a pot of water and

It's more of simmering the skull. So I'm going to run you through some of the things that I do, some of the stuff that I put in the water, and then kind of the way that I check to see if it's done, and then the way that I clean it up afterwards. And try to answer most of the questions that I've got when I've been explaining this to other people in just the way that works for me.

whether I'm traveling or whether I'm, you know, at home, whatever. I've got a little bit different setup when I'm at home than when I'm traveling, but it, for the most part, is kind of the same. So let's start with the items that you need. First, you need something to boil the water with.

There's lots of options. I mean, I use like a turkey deep fryer most of the time when I'm at home, but I've also done this just over a campfire in a pot. If you've just got like a deer, you could do it in a pot over the fire. It's cheaper. You don't have to pay for propane. You can even do it on, I've done it in a stove in the house. I've done the stove in other people's houses. I've done it on my Coleman camp stove, both out in the field and in my backyard.

One thing you want to think about is, like I said before, I use water as the way to clean it. I essentially kind of like boil the meat off of it. But I try to do it at more lower temperature where it's a simmer, where it doesn't go real hot and fast or it might dry that bone out.

Now, some of the things that you want to think about is, okay, you're putting a skull in the pot. You're going to clean up all the meat off of it. You want to retain everything because if you overdo it, what's going to happen is the bones of the skull will start to separate and everything that holds it together. The teeth will fall out. The pieces of the nose will fall out. Worst case scenario, I mean, it could split at the antlers. Like there's just a lot of things that can go wrong if you overcook your skull.

So what I do is I first prep the water. I have my pot and my whatever fire source it's going to be.

In the water, I like to add baking soda, which is just, or sodium bicarbonate. What that's going to do is it actually helps make the meat fall off of the skull. So I always add it to the water. Another thing I've started to add recently that I found works really well is some form of degreaser. For me, that just happens to be Dawn dish soap because it's always available. It's super handy. So two things that are pretty easy to find.

baking soda, dish soap. There's a lot of other tactics, other things you can do to make them whiter or other things, but this just seems to be an easy way that works for me. And also, if you get a little bit of the antler in the water, it's not going to stain them white. So you don't really have to worry about that.

so I'll fill up the water pot now you want to make sure that you have a pot big enough where you can submerge the whole skull it can get very difficult for elk skulls I've actually just found like these garden tubs that I use there's probably better pots for this like if you actually found a pot that's meant for boiling for deer and other things I just find like a big pot sometimes those turkey frying pots are just a little too much water to get going but it's also good to have a lot of water because it doesn't overheat too much as well the

depending on what you're using as your heat source. So I'll add my baking soda and then a little bit of dish soap. When I'm talking about a little bit of dish soap, it'd be like the amount that you would put on your hands to wash your hands after something that was just like, you know, you're washing dishes and you're going to wash your hands with the dish soap, that much soap in a big pot of water. Maybe like one little squirt in like a smaller pot of water. It doesn't have to be a lot.

As far as the baking soda goes, I would say like in a big pot, probably two tablespoons. In a small pot, let's go one tablespoon or half a tablespoon, something like that. I really just kind of wing it. You know, I've added a lot. Sometimes I've added a little. I found that about two tablespoons seems to work pretty good for those big pots like an elk skull. And then, you know, deer skull, like half a tablespoon to a tablespoon, somewhere in there.

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So now you're just going to prep your skull. What I would say to do for that is one thing that happens as it boils, you know, it's degreasing, it's separating the fatty parts, the meat's falling off. And what happens is that kind of layer of fat floats to the surface of the water. Now, if you've got antlers in there, that fat's going to stick to the antlers and then you're going to have to degrease the antlers later. Maybe you aren't boiling a deer or an elk, you've got an antelope.

You know, what I do with that is I put the whole antelope skull in there. I allow it to get hot where I can then pull the sheaths off.

And then I will strip the bony part that goes up into the sheaths, any meat or anything, and then submerge that fully. But one thing you want to think about is some way to keep that fat out. Or if you've got maybe a good flame, a fire, whatever, you don't want anything burning those antlers like my brother and I did. So what I started doing with that is taking aluminum foil, and I'll prep the skull by wrapping the antlers down at the bases with this aluminum foil.

It's really easy because it covers it up. You know, it's heat proof, it's fireproof, as opposed to maybe using plastic wrap or something like that. It works really well. So I do it enough to where everything that might touch the pot is covered anything where maybe some flames from fire might reach up and burn it.

maybe you're camping and you need to clean out a skull whatever so I'll use that aluminum foil to protect the antlers and it also is really nice because it keeps them clean from any of the fat that's in the top of the water so you don't really have to like degrease them later so it's just trying to keep it a little bit easier a little bit cleaner still look nice now I'll submerge the skull in the water I'll bring that water almost to a boil and then just kind of let it simmer

Now, it's one thing you want to keep checking it because it's sometimes hard to regulate that temperature. So it might go up and boil for a little bit and then just start dropping that temperature down a little bit or maybe add a little bit more cool water. If you have it at a boil, let's just say you went, well, okay, I'm just going to boil the thing, which does work and you'll get by with it. Teeth might fall out if you don't catch it right. I would say it'd probably only take about three hours if you were like straight up boiling it, maybe two hours.

If you're letting it simmer, it might take more like for an elk school, five hours for a deer school.

maybe two and a half hours, something like that. So you want to just keep constantly checking it. What you want is the meat to start falling off the bone as you pull it. Like imagine you slow cooked, like pulled pork, a bone in shoulder, and you're going to shred it off the bone and just starts falling off the bone. That's what you want when you've got that. Now it's ready to be pulled out of the water. So check it, you know, set a timer, check it every after the first hour, every 30 minutes.

minutes or so. And you'll kind of get a gauge on, okay, we've got a little bit of time. The reason that I check it so often is because I want to make sure that the water's not getting too hot, keep it at that below boil temperature at that more simmer level where it's just hot water in there.

and let it sit. The lower you can go and the slower you can go, the better it's going to be for the skull itself, but also time constraints and just the way those burners work and keeping things at that temperature can be fairly difficult sometimes. So I just keep an eye on it and constantly check it. Make sure that the water level never gets too low. So if it gets low, you can always add more hot water to it or even just add cool water and turn the temperature up a little bit for a little while.

Now, once the skull is ready to be cleaned, there's two methods. One is you pick off what you can, and then the second is cleaning it with water. So skulls in New Zealand or whatever, I've done these in a little shed that I was staying at in the kitchen sink in the kitchen, pulling all the meat off the skull, picking all that off, and then trying to wash out everything else I can with the sink. Better to use a hose.

What I do when I'm at home is I use a pressure washer. I picked one up at Costco that works really good. I think it was like 120 bucks. So it's cheaper than the price of paying someone to do a skull for you. And it'll pay for itself because you can wash your car and your house and whatever else you want with it as well.

I actually just use an electric pressure washer because I found it easier, but there's small gas powered ones that you can take with you if you wanted somewhere. You know, I do have another pressure washer that I got at Ace that's not so good.

So, you know, just depends. You don't want to have the pressure washer on too high PSI because it can just blow the skull apart. So you want to find one of the tips that's kind of a good mid-range, you know, they generally come with different tips so you can kind of figure out, okay, this one does a lot of blasting, this one's just more of a fan type.

and you use the angle of the pressure washer to start getting the meat off. So what I'll first do, whether I'm using the pressure washer or just washing it off with a hose or anything else, I first take as many big pieces off as I can just with pliers and a knife. I clean it up the best I can, take all the big stuff off.

Then I move to the washing phase. It's really good if you can kind of let it cool down a little bit because what's going to happen is as soon as you hit it with the hose, it's going to blow hot stuff all over you. You'll do that once, not twice. Once you've got like hot brains in your face, you know, you're going to really think, rethink everything the next time.

So now we kind of move on to that washing phase of cleaning the skull. So one of the questions I was getting is like, how do you remove the brain? So the first thing I do, I actually leave the brain in when I boil it. You know, people always suggested, oh, you know, scramble it up with a stick first, try to get most of it out, clean that out. I think with CWD and all the other things we're trying to prevent, the easiest way is just boil it, cook it out,

And then take it out. I'll use like a pair of long like needle nose pliers, reach in there, pull it out, throw it in the garbage instead of just like chucking it onto the yard. For the most part, you can get everything out that way. And that's the easiest, I think the easiest and cleanest way to do it.

Now, another tool that I use a lot would be a screwdriver. I go and find the earbuds, the eardrum. I put the screwdriver in there and pop those out. It just gives me a little bit more access to the brain cavity. You don't ever see that part of the Euromount and it kind of just holds everything.

if you've boiled your skull before and it kind of still smells afterwards, there's probably stuff in there that you just couldn't get out. So I just pop those out because it's easy and it's an easier way to clean. Then I take my hose, my pressure washer, whatever, and I start blasting the skull, start cleaning it out and blasting and kind of every direction that I can to start removing any meat or bits and pieces. I blast into the brain cavity with it, cleaning it out,

And then I also blast from like any hole you find, shoot water into it. Try to spray everything out that you can in between the teeth, along the top portion of the jaw, and then from the back of the skull out the nose.

If you simmer the skull right and you put in, you know, the dish soap and the sodium bicarbonate or baking soda, you should retain all that. I call it the nose cone. It's got definitely a different name, but it's just the easiest way to describe it. It's all the olfactory senses in there, all the interesting things in the nose, all

I like to leave that in for the most part. If I'm traveling or I'm somewhere else, I'll generally just blast that or cut that out because it's not 100% imperative for the European mount. And it's a lot easier to clean if you just cut that out if you're traveling and you just don't want to mess with it. If I'm at home and I have the time, I always take time to just make sure I simmer everything right and keep that.

But it's better to just start blasting things out from the back. Now you'll notice inside the skull in the nose, there's kind of like this cartilage piece. I'll use a pair of needle nose pliers to pull that out, being careful not to break anything. So in your kit of things you're going to need for this is probably a screwdriver, needle nose pliers, knife, some form of water to blast, whether it's a hose, whether it's a sink, whether it's whatever, and then your boiling stuff or your water kit.

Once that is all done, once the skull is completely cleaned up, now it's going to be time to whiten it.

I have found the best way to whiten the skulls is generally using hydrogen peroxide. I get a little bit stronger dosage of it. I get like the food grade. I think it would be 40V. It's normally used for like hair dye, hair salons. You can buy it online. It's like a commercial grade hydrogen peroxide. Now the hydrogen peroxide you put on a cut would be like 3% hydrogen peroxide. 40V is actually, I think it's 12% hydrogen peroxide.

There's a lot of ways you can use it. So you can either mix it into a paste, which works great. I've found that dunking it, like submerging it into peroxide seems to be the best. It kind of will attach to any piece of meat, bubble, fizz, and burn that stuff off.

I like to submerge it because I try to keep everything in the nose. I want all that cleaned. It's hard to like put paste in there and make it work. Now, one thing you're going to find is, okay, what's the balance of how much peroxide I'm using and can I get it submerged? So you're going to need to find a container that really matches the size of the skull and then prop it in a way that the level of the peroxide doesn't actually hit the antlers. Now, if I do use straight 40V, I'll probably let it sit on the skull for...

I don't know, six hours, eight hours. I mean, you can kind of start to tell what it looks like. If I have to cut it, then I might leave it overnight or longer. So cutting it would just be adding water. So if I cut it in half, if I use whatever, I think they come in like a gallon jug, it can get expensive if you have to use that much, but a gallon jug of that, and then a gallon of water. Now we're around 6% hydrogen peroxide. So I'm going to probably let it sit for a little bit longer. If I have to cut it down to 3%, I'm really going to let it sit.

Another option would be like they make that same 40V in like a gel where you can just coat it. I would do that and let it sit for about five or six hours. Now, what you want to do is make sure obviously the peroxide doesn't get on the antlers because it'll start turning them white. So you run it up to the level and then what I'll do is I'll take a paper towel, wrap it around the base and then cover that paper towel with the peroxide. Another option, I'm just throwing out a bunch of different options for whitening the skull V. If

If you want to just use the peroxide, pour it over the paper towels, like cover the skull and paper towels and then pour the peroxide on it. One thing you're going to want to do is make sure that you use the peroxide with a plastic container, not a metal container. And definitely use gloves because that peroxide will burn your skin at that higher level. You just don't want it on your skin or get it on your clothes. It'll kind of bleach out your clothes. But

But the peroxide is good because it doesn't deteriorate the bone. So if I hear people say bleach a skull, I think the term more means like bleach it white, but it doesn't mean use bleach. Because if you use bleach, which I have used before, the skull gets brittle and starts to fall apart after a little while. It might take a few years, but it's just not going to last. So the peroxide seems to be one of the better ways. I've also used other things like OxiClean,

not mixed with the peroxide, just OxiClean or Biz, which is like another detergent as a degreaser. But I think that the peroxide probably works the best if you only have a couple options. I mean, I've found sometimes you're like, okay, you're traveling somewhere. What I'll do is I'll go just into a supermarket. I mean, I have quite a few skulls at my house that I've gone to the supermarket. I've just got women's hair dye, platinum blonde hair.

opened up the packet and use that. I'm actually looking at an antelope skull that I did quite a few years ago that I use that on. It's now starting to kind of feel greasy and I don't know, it's like got this weird, like greasy texture to it. It's like years later. So I've decided that I kind of stopped using that because it kind of gets this, like makes the skull feel weird later on. And actually some of it, I don't know, it didn't really turn out as good as just using the regular hydrogen peroxide or the 40V or

whatever. I use the stabilized stuff because that way, if you open it, a lot of hydrogen peroxide, if you're buying it, get the stabilized one, because what happens, you'll open it, you'll use it, you'll put the lid back on. But once it's kind of contacted air, it starts to lose its potency. So you want the stuff that doesn't lose its potency if you're just buying it anyways. Now there's also peroxide gel, which works really well. You can kind of, I mean, you use less of it. You can have a small bottle. It's easier to travel with. You

You can put that on the skull, clean it up that way. That's a really good way that I use when I'm traveling. I generally won't submerge it, but I'll just use that gel and it's just easier to travel with, easier to find. And then I can clean the skull that way. So when I get back home, hey, the skull's done. I can travel across state lines. I don't have to worry.

Now, let's say you're traveling hunting and you need to remove the brain without, you're like, I don't have the stuff to boil it. I don't have the time, whatever. Another option would be if you don't want to skull cap it, what I'll do is I'll cut the back of the skull, right where the occipital joint, where it kind of goes into the spine. I'll cut that portion off with a handsaw.

I'll then get in there with my knife or whatever and remove the brain. You could then even clean it up a little bit with some gel peroxide and you should be good to go. Now the brain and spinal material is gone. There's none in there, none left. You can save that piece that you sawed off and epoxy it back on later if you ever want to use like a skull hooker type mount. Otherwise, it actually mounts to the wall pretty good without that piece on the back.

I prefer to just keep it and reattach it later with some Bondo and epoxy. Maybe like run a screw through it and just get it on there so I can, you know, if I would decide I want to use a skull hooker or something like that, it's pretty easy to do. That in a nutshell is how you clean or DIY European mount for an elk or deer.

pretty much anything. I do the same technique for everything. And if you do that, you're going to have a really good result. It's really fun to try. I know it's kind of one thing. It's like, okay, can you really listen to this in a podcast and understand how to do it? I think so. I mean, I wish that when I started, somebody just told me these things and it would have made it a lot more, a lot easier to

to understand. I did, I'm going to try to do a couple of videos of this. I got something on my Instagram right now, if you kind of want to like a recap of it and just to see some of the steps in process. But I think that, you know, it's not that hard to do. As a side note, I will say, if you're going to blast the skull with anything, put your rain gear on,

I have also tried people say just oh just use the pressure washer don't or a hot pressure washer don't even boil it. It doesn't turn out that well the skull needs some form of degreasing because later on it starts to sweat and gets weird. I've tried a lot of different things and I will continue to keep trying different options different methods. This one just seems to work most universal no matter where I'm at.

easiest way to do it. I mean, in a standard year, just based on guiding or for clients or just whatever, in camp with friends. And I mean, I end up at the end of the year with like everybody, we come over and we just start boiling our skulls. I'll do hundreds of these things in a year. And this just seems to be the way that works for me when I'm doing it. Maybe I've got a rhythm and a system down and I've kind of got it figured out this way, but I still constantly try

try other methods, if somebody mentions it or whatever, oh, you should try this way. I've tried different ways. And, you know, this way just seems to be the best for me. But

I think that if you've never done it or you're thinking about doing it, give it a try. It's fairly easy. It'll save you a couple hundred bucks and the end result looks good and it's cool. You can put it up on your wall and say like, oh, hey, I hunted that. I butchered it and I did the European skull mount myself. So just something to think about, some food for thought. Hopefully you find some success and you get a skull that you get to clean up this fall.

For me, this year we had a pretty good opening weekend. I was actually guiding this last weekend. We ended up getting kind of tagging out fairly quick for our clients, which was awesome. And it was just like the first day was rough. You know, I gave those opening day tips. Well, it didn't apply this year because the weather was so bad where we were at. Nobody was out and I was out and didn't see anything. That was like the first opening day I didn't see people or elk. So I thought, oh, hey, no one's going to be out. This is going to be great.

And it was still really tough because it's really hard to find animals if you can't see. And if they aren't moving around, there's like no tracks. It was just a difficult day. But after that, it started to clear up.

And things started to fall into our favor. But it also got me thinking, you know, when I really think about it, glassing is such an important tactic when it comes to hunting out west. So what I want to do is it's been a while since we've covered some glassing tips. So I think next week I'm just going to cover a few glassing tips and really just how to identify game through your binoculars, how to know what to look for, as well as maybe that size reference of people go like, well, am I looking for an ant or am I looking for an elephant?

like understanding the size reference and maybe some of the things that I look for that helped me spot an animal, not necessarily seeing the whole animal, but just some things that catch your eye that help you identify that there's an animal over there as you're glassing. So I think next week we're going to cover that. Also, you know, feel free to continually write in with questions and whatever. I've also been getting like a ton of great, great messages about some success and some just awesome things. So thank everybody for that.

feel free you know to subscribe to rate to like i say it a few times but you know you know does nothing but help us so i appreciate that and until next week keep those skulls boiled right don't over boil your skull all right see you guys

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