I have 4-5 African mounts and some whitetail, antelope, etc. I found several of the African mounts have some type of bug on and in them - they are essentially eating my mounts away - I do not know the name of the bug but they are small and you can see them on and in the hair of the animal - mostly around their heads.

Friend of mine had this same issue a last year and had to hire a pest control service to come in and treat them and then wrap them up in some type of cover for some weeks in order to get rid of them. Otherwise they will continue to spread to all the mounts in your home

Anyone have experience or background with this ? Thanks for any help

I've seen this asked before in the taxidermy section and they had answers how to deal with it.

Take them all outside put a huge tarp over them weigh down the edges and set a bug bomb off in there. I've done it before and they will spread to all lounge if not killed.

DANGIT!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dermestidae

Dermestidae beetles are more then likely what's eating your mounts. They are after the meat still in your mount and hide that is not tanned. There are two main ways to tan your hides. One is a commercial operation that uses harmful acids that are very expensive to maintain and dispose of. This costs the most money for the taxidermist, so some will use the "pickling" method where they do it themselves, or go to a non commercial operation where they pickle the hides. Basically they just dry them out and then soak them in a solution that makes the pliable to mount. These are the hides that the bugs love to eat. The hair will slip, and they will eat around all the edges of the cape.

My taxidermist used Golden State Tannery in California, even though he is in East Texas. He feels that they are worth the extra expense and time to deal with shipping them there and back, and I agree. I have no problems at all paying a little more for the best tanning of my hides possible.

With some horned animals, it is impossible to get the horns off the bone to totally clean all the meat that is between them. Boiling and leaving them in the bug boxes will get a lot of it, but never 100%. This is very common with some of the African animals. The shape of their horns will never allow the taxidermist to get them off. After all the cleaning is done, they will pack the inside of the horns with borax. When done properly, there should be no problems with bugs.

This is a big part of what separates a good taxidermist from an amateur. It is also very common in mounts done overseas and a good reason to pay the extra to get them done here.

Bug bombing them works, and there are several powders that you can dust your hides with that help. This is a never ending process that needs to be done every couple of years, or even yearly now that it's already started. I'm not familiar with the powders other then they exist and I know of them. I don't have any bug issues, I've just seen the damage being repaired and talked to my taxidermist about what he was doing to fix it.

I bug bomb my trophy room and mounts twice/year.

thanks for the info guys - I did some more online research and you are right - they seem to affect African heads more than others. I also read you can put each mount in a large trash bag and drop in Prozap insect guard and tie the bag off to be airtight - leave several weeks and supposedly kills them. Guess doing a large tarp as suggested would also work with a bug bomb. What a pain in the rear

I'm having the same problem. Is there nothing topical that you can safely use?

If you have a large enough freezer, I wonder if bagging them and putting them in the freezer for a couple of weeks would get rid of them without hurting the mount?

I used to do taxidermy until I found out that I had to work 7 days a week and could no longer enjoy the outdoors like I wanted to so I got a job where I was off on weekends and even had paid vacation.
Anyway I hated those quick mounting processes where you did it yourself to put more money into my pockets.
I soon felt that this wasn't the way to do it and sent my capes out to have them tanned.
Much easier to work with and the customer was thrilled with the results and best thing no bugs. I wanted to mount them like they were my personal mounts.
I've got heads that I did over 30 years ago and they are in remarkable shape for being around that long.

I read that is an option but that they tend to come back -

thanks - I wonder if it will affect the mount though -

Talk to your taxi about it. But I also bug bomb my house 2 times per year also.

The problem with spraying and putting the heads under a tarp and bug bombing them it will only kill the bugs on the surface of the hide and under the hair.
The problem is that the majority of the bugs will be under the hide in the voids between the foam form and the hide.
It could be near impossible to get them all, but all you can do is try!

No. You can get it in foggers also.

Permethrin is a repellent and bug poison. So soak it good. All your insect blocker clothing has the same chemical in it.

It's doesn't react to plastics etc like deet.