no they are using fiberglass mounts for fish now.... they airbrush them.
Sorry, that's just not correct as a broad generalization. They've been using fiberglass repros for years, but they're only about a tenth of the taxidermy business. Perhaps the cheesy, just out to make a buck guys in your neck of the woods only do glass repros, but
good taxidermists mount the fish. Obviously, the "catch and release" crowd are in this market, but the folks who still like to eat fish aren't. As for the airbrushing, they've done that for years, too. It's the only way you can get the dots on the scales of a bass to look right. The only way you can get the details of that specific fish's body is by sculpting the foam body form to fit the skin of that fish.
I just spoke with my brother about this chameleon. He hasn't seen it yet but I will pass his comments along when he does. There are three ways a reptile could be mounted.
1) Freeze Dry - It's not as simple as you might think. There's far more to it than "ship it to the freeze drier guy". You have to prep the animal
just right or it will look like crap. (I will omit the details here!) Note that freeze dried does not mean that it can't rot later!
2) Traditional Mounting - Preserve the skin, mount it on a form, paint it. The form for a cham would probably be custom sculpted since there's not enough of a demand for them to bulk produce them.
3) Resin reproduction - The taxidermist takes a mold of the animal, then casts a positive in two part resin from the mold and paints it.
Lots of details omitted from each method, but you get the idea.
John said there's a guy in Wisconsin who's
really good with reptiles. He does only traditional mounting and hand carves all of the bodies, custom mixes the resin to match the animal's tongue precisely, and just does incredible work. There's also a guy in South Carolina who's really good, too. He does a lot of alligators and custom carves the foam bodies.
Anyway, I will pass along his comments when I get them.
