TAXIDERMY `ARTISTS' SHOOT FOR LIFE-LIKE LOOK

Jason Welker captured first place in the Most Creative category for this mounted turkey at a taxidermy competition he recently attended.

Devin Amelunke has also won several awards. Amelunke won Best White Tail for the deer in the center at the competition.

Devin Amelunke is an artist. He hasn't painted any priceless pictures, written any best-selling books or played any monstrous music halls. He doesn't do any of these things that are considered artistic -- he's a taxidermist.

And he considers taxidermy an art.

"It all boils down to how you define art," Amelunke said. "You don't see mounts in an art museum, but you don't see a compact disc in an art museum either. To me, art is anything that evokes an emotion."

And looking around his shop Ozark Mountain Taxidermy in Jackson, one will certainly have emotions evoked.

On one wall is a mounted bobcat, its fangs bared, looking every bit as though it were about to pounce. In another wall is a big bass, whose mouth looks as though any minute might twitch.

In other words, the mounts look life-like, and that's the key to great taxidermy, Amelunke says.

"We try to create a life-like look about them," Amelunke said. "We try to make them as close to life-like as Mother Nature made them. That's what taxidermy is all about."

Amelunke said he first became interested in taxidermy because he "couldn't afford to get anything mounted himself."

He said he learned by doing. He used to go shoot pigeons in his home town of Fredericktown and try to mount them, and they looked terrible. So he'd "tear it apart" and try again.

Finally, Amelunke took a correspondence course that he found in an ad, and he was on his way. He mounted animals for people ("No pets, though," he says, of a policy he still clings to, "there's no pleasing pet owners.") and only intended to do it for a while.

Then Amelunke attended Southeast Missouri State University, where he majored, and got a degree in, wildlife biology. This degree's pertinent to his job, but not for the reasons one might think.

"My degree doesn't have a lot to do with animal anatomy, but it taught me a lot of people skills," Amelunke said. "That helped me, because this is a business like anything else."

While in college, Amelunke met his future wife and got married before he graduated. He said he never considered taxidermy as a future occupation, it was just a way to make extra money.

So he was a busy man. He attended college full-time, had what he called a "regular job" and he did taxidermy work on the side.

Amelunke remembers when he finally graduated from college, his mother asked him what he was going to do next.

"I told her I'd finish what was in the freezer and then I'd find a job," Amelunke said. "I just never finished what was in the freezer."

So eight years ago, he opened Ozark Mountain Taxidermy. Shortly after, he hired Jason Welker, whom he calls the other half of the business.

"There was just no way for one person to get everything done," Amelunke said. And more recently, Amelunke hired Tony Lomedico, a 16-year-old taxidermist who attends Jackson High School.

"I'm pretty lucky to have two talented people to help me out," Amelunke said. "Because not everyone has an eye for taxidermy. Jason and Tony are award-winning taxidermists."

Actually, all three of them are. Just two weekends ago Amelunke won Best White Tail for a deer mount in the Masters Division, and Welker won Best White Tail in the Professional Division.

Welker also won first place for Most Creative in Show for a turkey he mounted. They chose that one of all the mounts of the show and there were approximately 50.

And they've won other awards, too.

But the awards and recognition are only part of the reason they attend these competitions.

"It also teaches us," Amelunke said. "That's why we go. We constantly want to improve the product for our clientele.

"We want them to be able to put their mounts in the living room, not the garage."

They learn by the critiques the judges give at these shows. The judges might be better able to spot weaknesses in their work, Amelunke said.

The process of taking an animal and mounting is quite a task, but he said any animal is basically done the same.

First, the skin is removed. Then they put the skin through a process called "tanning." This is changing the chemistry of the skin from a raw state to a leather-like state.

Next the skin is positioned on a polyeurathane foam mannequin with the exact dimensions of the original animal. Then they glue the skin on the mannequin.

"Our biggest task," Amelunke said, "is making sure the skin is glued on right."

And that's not easy.

"It sounds simple," Welker said. "But it takes a lot of patience."

Then they have to allow the glue a certain amount of "dry time," which varies anywhere from a week to two weeks.

And finally they have to do what they call the finish work. That includes grooming, putting in the eyes, and painting areas that are dried out.

Obviously, the bigger the animal, the more time it takes to mount. It takes about eight hours for a deer head and they just finished a complete bear. It took both Amelunke and Welker working a week to finish that.

Amelunke said that the anatomy and behavior of the animal is very important to taxidermy.

"You don't want a coyote climbing a tree," he said. "Because they just don't do that."

And he said his guys know their animals. (Welker does deer heads, Lomedico does fish, and Amelunke does everything else).

"We spend as much time studying live animals as we do mounting," Amelunke said. "Sometimes we may get a species I've never heard of.

"Then it's off to the library."

But most of the time they get animals they know about. Amelunke said they do more fish than anything else.

"Everybody fishes," Amelunke said. "And they do it all year long."

Amelunke admits that while they can attempt to get as close to life-like as they can, Mother Nature has no substitute.

"We're not perfect," Amelunke said. "But we want to be as close to Mother Nature's creations as we can."