How We Source Our Pricing

Taxidermy pricing is hard to research because most taxidermists quote by phone. A minority publish a rate sheet on their own website. This page explains exactly where our numbers come from, how confident you should be in each one, and what we found when we went back and checked our own work.

The short version

We keep 311 price ranges in a single dataset. 108 of them (35%) are backed by a published source we link below and re-check: 103 by a taxidermist's own price list, and 5 by a published industry survey (the Bowhunting.com deer figures, which we label as a survey in the table below rather than calling it a price list). The other 203 are labelled indicative estimates: no published price list backs them. Most are ranges we searched for and could not source; a few are ordinary retail prices for consumable supplies, and a handful are sums of other ranges in this same dataset, which makes them estimates built on estimates.

Every range is one or the other. There is no middle category, and no range is attributed to a source we have not read.

What we actually did

On September 2, 2026 we searched for US taxidermy studios that publish a price list on their own website, opened each one, and read the prices off the page. Where a published price supported one of our ranges, we attached that page as the source, together with the effective date the studio states and the date we checked it. Where we could not find a published price, we marked the range as an indicative estimate rather than attaching a source that does not support it.

This was desk research against published pages only. We did not contact any studio, run a survey, or ask taxidermists to submit rates. Where we cite a survey, it is someone else's published survey and we say whose.

What we got wrong before, and fixed

We think a methodology page is worthless if it only describes the good version. Checking our own dataset turned up three real problems, all now corrected:

• A survey was cited for animals it never covered. Bowhunting.com's state-by-state survey is a real, useful piece of research, but it prices exactly one thing: a whitetail deer shoulder mount. We had been citing it for birds, fish, bears, elk, moose and small mammals, none of which appear in it. It is now cited only for deer shoulder mounts.
• A shop selling finished mounts was cited as a rate sheet. We had been sourcing service prices to a catalogue of ready-made taxidermy sold as products. What a finished mount resells for and what a taxidermist charges to mount your animal are different numbers. That business does publish a real service price list, and that is what we cite now.
• A studio was credited with prices it does not publish. One well-known pet-preservation studio was cited on dozens of ranges. Its website publishes no prices at all. The figure circulating for it comes from press coverage over a decade old, so we removed the attribution rather than repeat it.

What our ranges mean, and what they do not

A range on this site is a picture of what published price lists show, not a quote and not a market average. Specifically:

• This is not a survey. It is a convenience sample of studios that publish prices online. Studios that publish rates are likely to be larger and more marketing-active than average, so our sample is not representative of every US taxidermist.
• Published dates vary, and some are old. We show the effective date each studio states. Some price lists are current; a few are several years old. Where a studio states no date, we say so rather than implying it is current.
• Add-ons move the total a lot. Open mouth, wall or floor pedestal, habitat bases, antler repair and rush work are usually priced separately. A base price is rarely the final bill.
• Per-inch fish pricing is not comparable across shops. Studios differ on minimum charges, on whether a replica or a skin mount is being priced, and on how they measure. Read the shop's own minimums.
• Life-size bear pricing comes in two incompatible shapes. Some studios publish a flat price, others a per-linear-foot rate. They cannot be compared without knowing the animal's size.
• Indicative means we could not verify it. Treat an indicative range as a rough orientation for a conversation with a taxidermist, not as a number to budget against.

Always get a written quote

Nothing on this site is a quote. Prices depend on your specimen, its condition, the pose, the base, your region and the studio's backlog. Ask for the total in writing, including add-ons, deposit terms and expected turnaround, before you hand anything over.

The sources we cite

Every page below was opened and read on 2026-09-02, and each was confirmed to be reachable. "Effective date" is what the studio's own page states; "not stated" means the page gives no date, and we do not guess one.

Corrections

If you are a taxidermist and we have cited your published prices incorrectly, or you publish a rate sheet we should be reading, tell us and we will fix it. Our editorial standards explain how we handle corrections, and our contact page is the fastest route.