Clark has been selling live bait for three years and doing taxidermy for eight years. He said he originally opened his business as a hobby.
"It's kind of like a hobby. It's just something I like to do. It's just something I always kind of wanted to do. It's actually more than a hobby, it's a full-time job," Clark said. "For the taxidermy part of it, I just learned on my own and watched videos. And then I joined the Iowa Taxidermists Association. They have yearly meetings and they have seminars, so I learn a lot through that. Also, I competed in national competitions. They have a lot of good seminars you can go watch and learn."
Clark said he mainly works with the mounting of deer horns and deer shoulder mounts.
"Mainly I do deer heads - they're my main thing," Clark said. "When I start out, the skin's on the head, so I have to take it off the head. I have to flesh all the muscle off the skin before I even tan it. You have to take a knife and split open the lip and clean off all of the stuff inside there. But, there's a lot of tedious work involved in it. After I tan it, I have a machine that shaves the actual skin thinner so that it goes on the form a lot better and shows the detail."
Clark said the average deer head takes about 15 hours to do, with most of the time being drying time. After it is dry, he paints it and finishes it. He said depending on the humidity, it can take one to two weeks before one is finished.
All that is original when the deer head mounting is complete is the skin and the horns, which is glued on a form. Fake eyes are glued on and painted, along with the nose, to finish the look.
Clark said he spends his mornings and part of his afternoon working in his shop.
"I just work on mounting the deer and selling bait. It gets pretty busy in the summertime," he said.
In addition to mounting deer, Clark's Taxidermy offers some fishing tackle and many types of bait including wax worms, minnows, nightcrawlers and chubs, to name a few, with part of his shop housing tanks in the floor for the minnows and chubs.
Clark said he finds his job rewarding when the customer returns to the shop to pick up the finished product.
"It's when the customer comes back to pick up their deer heads and they're really happy with it and he remembers shooting his deer," he said.
Clark said he has received some odd requests over the years.
"I had somebody who wanted their canary mounted and I've had one lady, I don't know if she hit the hummingbird with her car or something, but she wanted to know if she could get that mounted," he said. "A guy's cat died and he was really connected to his cat and he wanted it done - there are freeze dried wholesalers that freeze dry a whole animal and I've sent them away to have that done in Missouri."
Clark's Taxidermy is open various hours during the day. For more information about Clark's Taxidermy, call 432-7875.
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Reach staff writer Katie Stines at kstines@newsrepublican.com.
