How To Build A Turkey Fan Mount - Subarctic Angling

Fan mounting is a great way to preserve the memories you made this season and, unlike big Moose and Deer mounts, can look subtle enough to get the approval of even the non-hunters in your family. These mounts can be created using just a hand full of common household materials and do not require any taxidermy skills to achieve a great result. This article will walk you through step by step, from shot to wall, how to make a fan mount of your own.

Step 1: Remove the Fan and Beard

Removing the fan is one of the first things that I do after gutting the turkey in order to avoid unnecessary damage during the transport and cleaning process. Removing it is relatively easy, finding the tail bone just above the bird’s vent and cutting along it with a sharp knife. I typically try to leave quite a few extra feathers attached as it is much easier to remove them later than to try to re-attach them.

Removing the beard can often wait until the plucking process is complete as cutting it off will expose the breast sponge and can make a bit of a mess if you’re not prepared to clean the whole bird.

Step 2: Freeze The Fan

Whether you shoot your bird on opening day or on the last day of the season, it is important to freeze your fan and beard as soon as possible. This will not only keep things from rotting until you get around to creating your mount but also kill any lice or mites that could be living in the feathers. These poultry lice are extremely common in Turkeys and although they can’t be spread to humans, hanging any form lice on your wall is highly discouraged. I typically keep the fan in a plastic grocery bag in the freezer as well to make sure that the dead lice stay in the bag and do not get mixed in with other food you may have in there.

Step 3: Remove the Meat

Once you are ready to prepare the fan and have it all thawed out, the first step is to remove the meat. This is by far the most tedious step of the process but is absolutely essential to making sure the mount lasts and does not smell or rot on your wall.

As you can see below, quite a bit of meat (red) and fat (yellow) is left on the fan from removing it in the field. The centre of the fan will also have a piece of tail bone that will need to be removed and will take a lot of the meat with it. A sharp pocket knife will be sufficient when removing the large pieces of meat and bone. This is also the stage when you can begin removing unwanted feathers from the back of the mount.