The Color of a Deer's Nose?


PotashRLS

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Got into a little "difference of opinions" this afternoon while setting up our booth for the Wisconsin Deer Classic Show. Our favorite Taxidermist brought to our booth a Taxidermist Pro/Championship/know it all blah blah blah fella. Our taxidermist does awesome work and 7 of the 8 heads at our booth are ones he did. 3 of the heads are freshly mounted and have grey noses. Our taxi says that is how they are supposed to be according to this other fella the know it all guy. The noses in my opinion look like crap. This Grand Champion Taxi guy tells our fellas you must not have seen many live deer in your days. :eek::eek: Whow, wrong thing to say. Long story short we are in awe of this new fad of grey noses all of a sudden. What do you guys know about it?

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Seen lots of deer noses live up close in person and in pics from cams Tracy. Here is a recent pic. Does not look gray to me, don't recall ever seeing any mounts with gray noses either, and I have seen lots of mounts. The king of bucks trailer and the competition mounts at the nwtf, I don't think I saw any that had gray noses either.

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Thanks guys, keep your pics and responses coming.......

I will hopefully get to talk to the clown as I work the show booth tonight and all day Sunday. I'll fill you in later. Thanks!

Will be a very political show..............saw a booth being set up by the "hunters against Earn A Buck" :D Should be some heated deer management discussions this year:cool: The Taxidermy contest is awesome and I will definitely be looking for grey noses.

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Theres no right or wrong answer to this. It totally depends on the indivdual deer. As an across the board average though, I would say MOST deer start out as a dark to med. grey on the bottom of the nose pad and fades into darker shades of black, brown as you go up. Personally, Ive never seen an all grey or all black nose pad.

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That said, I understand why the taxi made the comment about you not being around live deer. What he means is up close, at arms length for hours at a time. Looking closely at anatomy, hair patterns and skin colors. You need to realize that taxidermist are re-creating details in a mount as the animal was before it expired. They do so by using photo reference of live animals. Once an animal is dead, muscles relax, blood moves and skin color changes. Ive had several arguements with hunters over the color inside of ears. "THAT'S WRONG! ALL DEERS EARS ARE WHITE INSIDE" Yup, they are when their dead!

Edited by artisticwhitetails
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No they are not black, they may appear to be black to the eye but indeed is multiple colors. Take a deer to competition with a black nose and your just askin for trouble.

I personally use, flesh tone,gray,black umber,burnt umber,gloss. These 4 colors when applied in specific orders will give you a natural look that can be found in most deer. Keep in mind if the nose is dry it will appear to be darker in color.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The second pic of the live deer nose is an excellent example of a deer nose NOT being black. They are dark, and if you saw a mount w/ a grey nose that stood out it was obviously too light. Not only are they not jet black, if you look closely you will see they are lighter between the nodules (bumps) than the nodules themselves. Often they are more smooth on top than they are near the lip line, and as you can see in the pics, most of the time a whitetails nose is wet from the constant licking. These subtleties are what quality taxidermists are trying to replicate, but if you don't get it right, they can look bad-wrong!

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Was watching the taxidermy for sportsman show with Dan Rinehardt the other day. He mounted a whitetail deer. During the painting process he painted the nose jet black.

I wouldn't take anything Dan Rinehart did as being correct, unless you want your noses end up looking like his. I want mine to look like that second reference picture.

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I wouldn't take anything Dan Rinehart did as being correct, unless you want your noses end up looking like his. I want mine to look like that second reference picture.

I agree, I wouldnt follow too much of Dans ways. And second I wouldnt follow much of what any Taxidermist does, everyone has their own way od doing things and thats ok, but for me good reference photos will show you the correct way!

Edited by RWTaxidermy
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