Preserving nature

By John Walker
The Duncan Banner

DUNCAN July 11, 2008 01:58 pm

— When Sharon Utendorf decided to learn taxidermy in the year 2000, she was living around Orlando, Fla. On her way home from work on a Friday night, she took the rural route and took note of any roadkill.
Early the next morning, she drove the same route and placed any new roadkill in her vehicle to take home and practice on.
“If I messed up, I figured I could just throw it away,” Utendorf said.
In 2006, she along with her husband, John, moved to rural Stephens County east of Velma to grow a part-time taxidermy business.
“We wanted to live somewhere rural like what we remember growing up in,” she said.
“Florida has changed a lot.”
John Utendorf met Sharon in 2003. An avid hunter, he married her two years later and helps her with the work.
“It’s a lot of fun and definitely different,” he said.
While stuffing a deer may seem like less-than-desirable work, Sharon loves it.
“Once you get over the idea of blood and guts, it’s not that bad,” she said.
“You just play with the outside material. It’s not real hard.”
They split the work up between them equally.
“He does the fleshing and mounting,” she said.
“I do the finishing. Basically, he does the hard stuff. We enjoy doing it together.”
Sharon originally started this work when, rather than hiring someone to mount her first deer, she was challenged to do it herself.
“I’ve done crafts and arts stuff a lot,” she said. “I did an online taxidermy course. Took a year and a half to complete, but I got my diploma.”
The best part of their business is seeing the gleam in people’s eyes when they come to pick up their mount, they said.
“It’s awesome to see them ask themselves whether their wife will allow them to hang it on their wall,” he said. “They are like ‘wow! That’s exactly the way I remember him when I shot him.’”
June 26-28 both went to Oklahoma City for their first taxidermy conference and competition. They won two thirds and four honorable mentions out of 110 different entries.
“It was my first event,” she said. “I cried. I thought it was kinda neat.”
On their ranch, they are able to stuff any animal a customer wants.
“Except ducks,” she said.
Ducks are a migratory bird and they have to have a federal license to stuff migratory birds.
“The federal government has property rights on all migratory birds, so even when someone mounts a migratory bird on their wall, the federal government still owns the bird,” she said.
Still, the two of them have lots of fun together.
“It’s just the two of us to take care of the ranch,” John said. “People tell us all the time that it’s pretty awesome and amazing that we can stay so busy all the time and not argue or fight. We have a lot of fun.”

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