Thought I’d share some work…
So, with deer antlers, this is a quick process, boil skull in some detergent (skull, not antlers, water level below antlers), clean, scrub, wipe with BLO and you are good. The end.
However, with horned animals, the process is a little bit more involved. There’s cartilage and skin and all sort of things between the horn and the bone. It needs to be removed or it will stink and start getting mouldy, hard and won’t be going anywhere in a hurry.
I am not going to go into details, because this is the video that I found and this is the process that I followed.
Some tweaks:
- I don’t have a pressure washer, so I spent some time pulling and poking and scrubbing, to get all the tissue and fat off.
- First boiling to get the horns off, all of them popped off very easily after 10 minutes in the water. The last horn (one horn on the larger skull) took some effort. Probably 20 minutes to soften it up and then bit of banging with a rubber mallet. It did however just fly off at the end, like in the video.
- On the second boiling after the horns were removed, I didn’t bother with peroxide or anything like that. I did however added a bit of detergent to pot, to get the last bits of fatty tissue off the thing.
- I sawed some of the bone off, it serves no purpose in this. I left what’s needed for good contact with epoxy.
- Glue used: I have no idea what Bondo is (in video), I used 2-part (mixing) epoxy, works alright.
N.B.
Do NOT use Gorilla glue, it foams and will escape out from under the horn. Huge mess and ruins everything, because the foam dries and doesn’t come off. Good thing I tested it on something less ‘trophy’.
before
after
Dad claimed the large horns, which is fine. The small set is my first confirmed goat killed anyway 
