Outdoors calls teacher into new profession

The outdoors has always called to Paul Nelson of Attica. The native of Belfast, Allegany County, has a degree in elementary and special education from Geneseo State College.

He enjoyed his job as a fourth- and fifth-grade teacher at Batavia city schools, but wanted to spend more time outside. So he studied taxidermy and started his own business.

Nelson, 30, has operated Orion Taxidermy for four years. The job includes creating wildlife displays and preserving the occasional pet.

He lives in with his family.

I love the outdoors.

In teaching, your really busy time is September and October. You’re just getting into the full of things. And I just missed being out there in the woods at that time of year.

And the same thing with May. You’re busy getting report cards and things ready.

I decided when I was in grad school I liked my job but just wasn’t anxious to get up. I loved the kids as far as the record keeping, lesson planning and correcting papers at night, was like, “I think I need to be outside a little more than I am.”

So I decided to take a break and went back to school for taxidermy. It was always something that interested me and I never knew if I’d like it or not.

I stopped teaching, went there and made the switch. I really enjoy the work.

Actually, studying is never-ending. There’s always a ton of stuff to learn as far as anatomy goes. You can look at the same piece of reference and learn 10 new things in a year.

Just by looking at the same pictures, or reference casts, or skulls or carcasses. You can learn from anything.

Part of what I like about it too is you’re always going to continue and grow. There are competitions and trade shows that can keep you up to date. There are always new materials that are coming out.

I like that part of it.

I think the first thing we did was actually just skinning a deer—just a shoulder mount. Then we did a few fish and a few birds.

To be honest with you, your first ones aren’t that great. It’s a lot tougher and more involved than people would think. It’s not just ramming stuffing into it anymore.

For me it’s a little more difficult. I have to study more, and take a little more time, because I’m not super-artistic.

It’s good though. It seems like if I was to bee an artist on a canvas I may never get there, but at least in taxidermy if you work had enough, you can get your eyes to that point and translate it down to your fingers.

It’s one of those things where practice will make you better at it.

I love bears.

I like all the mammals actually. Fish are enjoyable. They’re just so much work that people don’t really want to pay what it costs to do them.

Each one’s different—like a bear obviously. They’re really greasy.

With fish, you’re casting artificial parts, and then trying to blend then to a natural skin. Actually those bodies are carved out of a big block of foam that you start with.

They’re all kind of fun in their own way, but they’re all challenging. Like a whitetail deer is probably one of the easiest things going, because you get so many repitions and there are that many specimens out there to practice on.

Since everybody across the country has them, there’s excellent references for them. Whereas some of the crazier things I’ve had to do…

Like I had to do an African gray parrot that was a customer’s pet. That’s when you get nervous because they’re looking at it all the time. They know exactly what their pet looks like.

It actually had a ton of feathers that were in molting stages. It’s impossible to replace those feathers. They just come right out when you clean them.

So yeah, that’s a challenge on birds. A lot of the times when a customer will get one that’s not a prime specimen and really shouldn’t be mounted, except its theirs, so they want it.

I get a lot of inquiries about them, but because since there’s no commercial mannequins and that sort of thing available, it can get really expensive.

Well, the parrot was there, because I had to get specially made eyes and build all the rest of the parts myself. So it was kind of a neat project to do.

And then I did a rattlesnake. I had done any reptiles in school, and I did it for the Beaver Meadow Audubon Society.

That was actually a lot of fun. I liked that project.

Just study. Study reference pictures—anything you can think of, as a far as how a snake is. There’s a ton of measurements you can take on a snake.

Or let’s say a fish I’ve never mounted. You can actually cast the very fish you’re going to mount.

No. (laughing) Those don’t last. They will last, but they won’t hold up without cracking, or looking like they’ve been put into some sort of formic acid or whatever, that kind of makes bones rubbery.

Absolutely. The materials, the methods, and everything is again so much easier to work with.

I’m about 30 hour (per week). Close to full-time.