A few dozen taxidermists will head over to the Crook County Fairgrounds this morning to find out whether they’ve succeeded in their quest to make a dead animal look as alive as possible. “When you’re at a competition, you aren’t judged against other taxidermists,” said Tim McLagan, president of the Oregon Association of Taxidermists. “You’re judged against a living animal.”

During the OAT’s 30th annual taxidermy show and competition, McLagan and other taxidermists from across the Pacific Northwest will have their work critiqued by a judge and see if they’ve won a prize. They’ll also have a chance to display their work so they can show the world how taxidermy has slowly evolved from a discipline that produces trophies to one that produces works of art.

The work

“Stuffing” is considered to be a dirty word among modern taxidermists, said McLagan, who has been doing taxidermy since 1976 and runs McLagan’s Taxidermy just north of Bend on U.S. Highway 97.

“Years ago, people would stuff a head with whatever they could find,” he said, remembering one shoulder-mounted bust he took apart that had moss shoved inside of it. “But now it’s not just putting a head on a wall, there’s a lot more to it.”

Once they’ve removed an animal’s skin and sent it to a tannery, taxidermists can use fiberglass or silicon to make a mold of their animal that can then be filled in with synthetic rubber or polyurethane foam. This process creates a basic form that can be painted by hand or used as a pseudo-skeleton that is much more realistic looking than the hand-crafted paper- or string-wrapped wire cages taxidermists formerly used to mount their work.

McLagan said some taxidermy supply companies make Styrofoam manikins that come in all variety of animal shapes, sizes and poses. With a little bit of clay and paper mache work, taxidermists can make these manikins match an individual animal’s muscle and bone structure so it’s features will show through once the skin has been pulled over it and sewn in place.

Putting together this underlying foundation — whether it’s a shoulder mount that features an animal’s head or a life-size mount that features its entire body — requires a detailed knowledge of the animal’s anatomy, McLagan said.

That applies to the mule deer, elk, birds, bears and cougars his clients bring back from their hunting trips around Central Oregon, and to the leopards, ibex and lions they may bring back from safari.

“It’s quite a process,” said McLagan, who can easily spend a week putting together a single life-sized mount.

Some hobby taxidermists, whom he said don’t have to rely on their work to make a living, can spend months on a single animal to enter it in a competition.

The competition

The Internet can be a valuable tool for taxidermists because it has given rise to discussion forums, chat rooms and websites such as taxidermy.net where people can share their work and ask questions if they run into problems or unusual animals they don’t know how to mount.

But nothing compares to the one-on-one feedback taxidermists can get when a nationally certified taxidermy judge looks over their work at a competition, hands them a scorecard and tells them how they can make it better. That’s what’s happening at the OAT’s 30th annual competition this afternoon.

“That’s why we go to these shows,” McLagan said, explaining the more advanced a taxidermist is, the harder their work is critiqued by a judge.

Many taxidermists will take their work to a state or regional competition like this weekend’s event and use the feedback they get to improve upon their work so they can enter it in a national or international event. Some taxidermists can win awards on the national level within their first few years, McLagan said, while others “just struggle with it” and never advance to the master’s level or success on the national stage.

One of the people providing feedback to this weekend’s competitors will be Troy Rose, who took home the Best in Show prize at last year’s OAT competition and runs his own taxidermy school in northern Idaho.

“Taxidermy is art,” Rose said before he started using terms like “flow,” “composition,” and “color coordination” to describe what he looks for in a mount.

Rose said he uses these terms because the ultimate goal of a taxidermist is to make the animal look as natural as possible. He will dock someone’s score if the eyes on a cougar don’t follow its expression or if the septum in a bear’s nose doesn’t glow when a light is shined up its nose.

“Are you making a piece of art I’d like to put up in my home?” said Rose, who even looks at the habitat — the leaves, grasses and tree limbs a taxidermist puts together at the bottom of a life-size mount — when scoring a particular piece of work.

If you go

What: The Oregon Association of Taxidermists’ 30th Annual Show and Competition

When: Competitors will get their scorecards and judge’s feedback starting at 8 a.m. today. The event will be open to the public from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Where: Carey Foster Hall at the Crook County Fairgrounds, 1280 S. Main St., Prineville

Cost: $5, free for children 12 and younger

Contact: 541-382-0379