Duck Stuffing

I’ve always had the mindset that if you're going to kill waterfowl you should eat it.  But a buddy raised the question, what about your taxidermy birds?  I guess that stumped me.  I put some thought into it and I have to say taxidermy is honoring the beauty of the bird.

I had a opportunity to spend a little time with Matt Smith of Birdworks Taxidermy, one of the premier avian artists in the country.  Matt works out of a little shop that makes the place I work out of look like the Taj Mahal.  As I made it to the door, the sounds of southern rock and the smell of duck was in the air.  I found Matt working on one of the nicest looking hooded mergansers I’ve ever seen.  My first impression was how focused, almost to a neurotic level, Matt is on these birds.  He is constantly preening, pulling and shaping the feathers, wings, heads and feet trying to create perfection.  Now to a untrained eye the birds may look the same when I walked in as they did when I left, but to Matt’s eye the imperfections are maddening.

Q. KC: When do you stop?

A. MS: (laughing) I don’t stop messing with them till they're in the cars and driving off.

Matt got into taxidermy at a young age when his father took him to get a bird mounted.  When his father found out the cost it might as well had been a million dollars.  Matt found an ad for a series of books on taxidermy in the back of a Field & Stream magazine and swiftly ordered his very own copy.  Matt has done everything from the mouse to the elephant, but birds always are special to him.

KC:  Why birds?

MS: I'm not knocking guys who do deer mounts, but the form dictates the mount.   With birds you can do so much more.

KC: What keeps you cutting edge? Excuse the pun.

MS: I study birds every night.  When I was starting out, reference material was limited to Ducks Unlimited magazines.   But with the power of the internet we now have unlimited amounts of references to look at.  I am constantly looking for the subtle nuances that define each species.

KC:  What birds are the most special for you to work on?

MS:  Birds for the kids.  I'll get birds for sick children and you want to get those back to them as quick as possible.  Those are special.

KC:  So how many birds do you have in your collection?

MS:  I don’t keep them.  I would be critiquing them all the time.

All the time we talked Matt would be working on one bird and something would catch is eye on a flying canvasback on the wall and he would mess with that one.  Then he would brush the head on a big mallard hanging on the stand, then back to the wood duck that is slated to go out the door when its lucky owner comes to pick it up.

I appreciate the fact that Matt can’t stop messing with the birds.  It's great for the lucky person that shot the bird but bad for a business owner I guess.  Whatever it is, it keeps people bringing him birds.

Matt will mount around 300 birds a year out of his tiny one man shop but he will never lose his passion for waterfowl.  This was evident when my cell phone rang (mallard ringtone) and Matt went to run out the door just to see a duck flying over his house.

Now I can see the similarity between being a chef and being a taxidermist.  You have to know anatomy, understand your customers, work long hours,  and be willing continue to work on your craft.

You can check out Matt's website Birdworks Taxidermy by clicking on the link