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2024 Open Season | Cat Tracks Wildlife – Tri-State Livestock News
May
Open Season |
Paul and Twin Klar own and operate their taxidermy business, Cat Tracks Wildlife, in Broadus, Montana. Klar grew up on a farm in Nebraska, and has always loved the outdoors. His parents’ place was in the southeastern part of the state, near DeWitt, the former location of the manufacturer of Vise Grips pliers.
“I’ve been hunting and fishing for as long as I can remember. Ever since I was little, I would disappear into the creek bottoms. Mom quit worrying about that a long time ago.”
As child, he picked up old books on tanning hides and experimented with preserving skins of a variety of animals.
“They were from the turn of the century, so very old recipes and old methods,” Klar said. “They kind of worked for a kid just trying to be curious.”
He didn’t plan on a taxidermy career.
“I had a pretty good job that had me traveling a lot,” he said. “I tell people that I used to be rich and famous, and then I took up taxidermy.”
When Klar had some wildlife mounts of his own done, he was disappointed in the results.
“I was disappointed and thought, ‘man, it has to be better than this,’” he said.
Eventually, Klar concluded that if he wanted a better job of mounting done, he’d have to learn how to do it himself.
“I finally just decided to do it,” he said.
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While the taxidermy school he attended was helpful, Klar said it was such a broad approach to the subject that he “learned just enough to be dangerous.”
“They tried to cover so much material in such a short time they don’t do any of it justice. You just continue to learn over the years.”
Klar learned a lot from getting to know other taxidermists, going to shows, entering pieces in competitions, and attending seminars put on by various states’ taxidermy associations.
“I have probably learned as much or more just through personal interactions with people than any other way, just talking, sharing and asking each other how we do things,” he said. “Once you start learning, you just get better. There’s always something I can do a little better than last time.”
Klar said that state level taxidermy shows have been invaluable in his learning process, and through them he has built lasting relationships with other taxidermists across the country. In August, he plans to enter his first piece at the World Taxidermy and Fish Carving Show, to be held in Coralville, Iowa.
“That’s a whole different level,” he said. “You’re really putting yourself out there.”
Judging is based on anatomy, first, before presentation or the artistic side of a mount are considered, Klar said.
“In the case of taxidermy, the authority is the animal itself. How did God make them? You look at the anatomy and ask, ‘Is it correct?’”
While a perfect replication may not be possible, it is Klar’s goal with every mount.
“I always tell people ‘God made them perfect.’ I’m striving toward that. I’ll never get there, perfection is not possible, but that doesn’t mean you don’t keep striving toward that.”
Klar has entered mounts in many state level shows, most frequently in his area: Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota.
“Every once in a great while, you win,” he said.
Klar’s studio is filled with mule and whitetail deer, elk, mountain lions, wolves and more. Mountain lions may be his favorite animals to work on, and Klar is preparing a special cat to take to the world show.
Garrett Harrington and his family ranch just outside of Broadus, where he harvested a huge male mountain lion on a frigid morning in January. Harrington spotted the cat’s tracks while feeding his sheep, and with the help of a couple of neighbors managed to get him treed.
This isn’t Harrington’s first lion. He got one when he was a junior in high school, and asked Klar to mount it.
“I wasn’t real sure how I was going to pay for it, but I knew I wanted to have it done, so I asked him about doing a work study, and I just worked it off,” Harrington said. “I got to learn quite a bit. I wasn’t so much interested in doing it full time but I have always been curious of the process.”
As a homeschooled sixth grader, Harrington got interested in trapping. He caught a couple of fox, and Klar showed him how to tan the hides.
“It really intrigued me,” he said. “We’ve known Paul for as long as I can remember. He is a brother in Christ and a good family friend.”
Since they live close by, Harrington can see the work on his mounts periodically as the process progresses.
“Paul is always visiting with us throughout the mounting process,” he said. “He’s constantly going back to the same piece for weeks on end while it’s drying to make sure it stays the right way. He takes it very seriously.”
Harrington said that Klar’s work “is by far some of the best I’ve seen.”
“He’s going above and beyond, taking steps to make mounts more realistic.”
Little things, such as pulling out the whiskers of a mountain lion so that he can thin down the hide in the whisker pad area, which is thicker than the rest of the hide, mean a more even drying process and a more accurate and realistic finished piece.
“If something is a lot thicker and holding more moisture, it takes longer to dry and can shrink up,” Harrington said.
The first mule deer Klar mounted at taxidermy school was for Harrington’s father.
“He has done quite a bit for us. He did a whitetail deer for me and both lions. I’ve also had him send quite a few things off to be tanned.”
It’s fairly common for a mounted deer’s nose to simply be painted shut, Harrington said. Klar drills out nasal passages in the Styrofoam forms for his deer mounts to resemble the nasal structure of a real deer.
“Paul’s work speaks for itself,” Harrington said. “He is opening different doors in what he’s doing.
For this lion, Harringtons chose a unique pose.
Harrington’s father built the pedestal for the lion mount of barn wood from a neighbor’s old lambing barn.
“It’s kind of a group effort, and having wood from a lambing barn brings it all together,” he said.
“It’s going to be an aggressive pose, snarling, mad,” Klar said.
For the world level show, Klar didn’t just buy a jaw set with teeth for the mount. He made a cast of the lion’s skull, tongue, throat and palate, upper and lower jaws, essentially sculpting it to create his own form unique to this individual animal. Klar also made a cast of teeth just for this mount.
Every one of the little papillae on the mount’s tongue is standing up.
“When he’s snarling, they’re all standing up. Holy cow, it really brings the whole thing more to life. It’s turned out to be one of the best tongues he’s had,” Harrington said. “I can’t wait to get it in the house.”
Harrington’s lion weighed 151 pounds “pretty much gaunted up,” he said. “He’d killed a porcupine for breakfast, which is pretty much the equivalent to you or me eating a candy bar. If he’d eaten a deer, he could easily have weighed 170 if not more.”
The lion’s skull measurements were also phenomenal. “He missed Boone and Crocket by only a quarter of an inch on length,” Harrington said. “He would have made it in width. He was quite a critter. I was hoping to get a lion of this caliber someday, thinking I would probably go to western Montana sometime. I wasn’t expecting to do it right here near my place!”
The Russian olive where they treed the cat was only 600 yards from the Broadus High School. Harrington’s lion was one of eight total harvested in the area between September of 2023 and March of 2024. He’s hoping that this year, he and his neighbors won’t be missing as many yearling ewes as they were last year.
“Paul cut the tenderloins out of the lion and we did eat them,” Harrington said. “If you put pork chop and lion chop side by side you wouldn’t know the difference. Paul has substituted mountain lion for pork on several occasions. He brought some down to church for a gathering, and it was one of the first dishes gone. He didn’t tell anybody until after they ate it.”
Harrington said he would rather eat mountain lion than bear because it is clean meat; mountain lions are clean killers and when a carcass spoils, they go kill something new, where bears are scavengers and will eat just about anything.
Meanwhile, Klar is putting the finishing touches on Harrington’s big cat. He said he will probably be fiddling with trying to get it “just right” until he loads it in his trailer to head for the world show.
“You just continue to strive after excellence,” Klar said. “You’re chasing perfection, knowing that you will never ever get there. God made them perfect; I try to get as close as I can.”
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