General Discussion

yessss, vulture culture!!

i haven't really been actively collecting lately because i just don't have the money. my most recent additions to my collection are sweet small gifts from friends. but once i have a stable income i'd really like to get back into it. i just collect pelts and bones right now but i definitely would like some mounts in the future, and once i have my own place i can only assume i'll be doing a lot of roadkill collecting and whatnot

my favorite things i own are my coyote pelt named Buddo and my coyote skull. i love coyote parts but i'm also very excited at the prospect of someday amassing a good amount of wolf and red fox bits

edit: oh, also, is anyone here interested in van ingen & van ingen? i am completely fascinated by their history and their work, and if i ever get rich i would definitely make a point of buying one of their mounts or rugs immediately

[quote name="SageKorppi" date="2014-06-29 16:49:38"]To address what @Preytorian said, there is nothing inherently wrong about buying anything from hunters if done legally. They pay for licensing, which goes right back into the pool of money used for research and management of wildlife and their habitats (in the USA, which you must be in if you are finding pronghorn and coyotes). Many hunters are the best conservationists, and many hunting organizations have contributed more to conservation than most other organizations out there. Anyone interested in collecting natural history items should definitely ask themselves about the ethics of doing so, and importantly, what their [i]personal[/i] ethics are. If your personal ethics don't support getting material from hunters, that's fine, but it's not inherently unethical for others to get their materials from legally harvested animals that are regulated.[/quote] Totally agree! Personally I fully support hunting and am happy to buy hunted animals. Even sport hunting has it's place and has huge benefits for conservation. Hunting is also vital to keep populations in check and control invasive and harmful species. I always laugh when people claim their collection is "cruelty-free" because they don't buy from hunters. Natural deaths or being crushed by a car tends to involve far more suffering and pain than being shot. I have plenty of natural death specimens but I don't believe they're any better than hunted ones.

I saw the nicest otter pelt today, I had no idea how soft they were! Probably the nicest feeling thing I have ever touched. They have very interesting fur. Short, but super thick. Too bad I didn't have money on me or I totally would have bought it.

I used to collect various small animal skeletons (birds, rodents, lizards) but they all we're lost when I moved. :c

I also used to collect feathers that I found but I found out that some of them were illegal to own... I don't have them anymore for obvious reasons.

I'm more of an all-around naturalist than specific bone-collector, but I do have a collection at home! Much smaller than it used to be, after a wool moth event a few years back that cost me most of what I probably wasn't supposed to own anyway.

(laws in the U.S. can be really, really harsh depending on the critter. U.S. collectors please contact fish&game and check stuff with them. in general, if it's interesting and cool, there's probably a law about who is and is not allowed to pick it up. This even extends to molted feathers and roadkill.) These laws are only enforced sporadically, but can compound fast if you're caught picking up the wrong red-tailed hawk feather by the wrong person. Don't collect any dead birds of prey or large carrion-eaters like ravens or condors, and don't mess with migratory bird parts unless you've got the hunting tags for them! If you do find one dead or one hits your window, put it in a ziplock with the date and location and call your nearest university museum. They're about the only ones who can take them, and they generally want them too.

Because of this I major in snake skins, shells, insects, antlers and mammal skulls, with my only two surviving pelts being a coyote and a bobcat I skinned myself (both shot legally as marauder pests) but me being a novice ten years ago when I skinned them they're both in less-than-stellar state. My other coyote, beaver, and a big collection of pheasant skins all went the way of the moth when I stored them improperly as a kid. I still do collect feathers, but am trying to be awfully careful about what I pick up. It's good incentive to learn to draw them and leave them behind.

I have a few wet specimens too- a scorpion I inherited and an aberrant large spider of my own, alongside an insect collection (about 25% properly mounted and labeled! I'm so far behind on this) and some experimental pinned spiders.

This thread pleases me.


Back when I was up in Alaska, I never found any natural corpses or bones laying around. Quite a different story now that I've moved to SoCal.

I absolutely love bones of all kinds but sadly, I haven't been able to start collecting because my parents get weirded out by dead things.
But now that I'm in college, I do plan on a magnificent collection in the future!

I wanted to be a paleontologist when I was little, that was my dream job so I guess my affinity with vulture culture started really early on~

lairinx.deviantart.com

I think that my weirdo wannabe art might be appreciated here, it's not much but I like them!