Northern Michigan Voices is a series by 9&10 News reporter Olivia Fellows in which she interviews a person in the community about a story from their life. Everyone has an interesting story to tell, and we want to give you a voice, Northern Michigan! To submit your own story pitch, see the bottom of this article for more details.
In this edition, Olivia talks to Ben Blamer, who owns The Mount Medic and works in specialized taxidermy restoration fixing up some of the most elaborate and expensive mounts in Michigan. Learn how Blamer uses an extensively detailed process to restore and beautify some unique and challenging mounts, often saving them from decay and infestation.
Q: Tell me a little bit about yourself, and what inspired you to start a business around taxidermy restoration?
BLAMER: I graduated from CMU in 2016 with a business degree. I went and got my first job out of college, and was trying to utilize that degree that I paid way too much for. I worked for a year and a half, and I cannot recall a time when I was more miserable in my life. I was sitting behind a desk all day, every day, just going nuts. I’ve always been a creative type and just didn’t really have a creative outlet at all.
I left my first job out of college, and I was working at a golf course back home in Fremont where I’m from. I remember one of the members there asking me, “So what are you going to do at the end of the golf season?” I said, “I have no idea. I was gonna start sending out resumes in August or September.” He tells me his taxidermy company’s hiring. I didn’t know the first thing about taxidermy, and he told me that wasn’t a problem and that they kind of liked it that way. It’s one of the largest taxidermy companies in the world right here in central Michigan that nobody really knows about outside of the hunting community.
To me, it sounded creative, sounded artistic. I’ve always had that side to me that I’ve always enjoyed but wondered how I could make a living off of it. I went and applied, and kind of got a very basic entry-level job there, and ended up moving up somewhat quickly, and got into a lot more of the stuff that I’m doing today.
Q: What was it like for you to learn the ropes of not only taxidermy but the restoration aspect that you do now?
BLAMER: Getting into it was easy because of the company I worked for. They are one of the largest taxidermy companies in the world, based right out of Blanchard, Michigan. I was super fortunate to come into this place and work with some of the absolute best taxidermists. I worked with multiple world champions and Michigan state champions, and that just made it extremely easy. The taxidermy world is constantly changing and if you think you’re one of the best, you are probably way behind already because there’s something new to learn every single day.
Before I started my company, when I was learning I knew I was learning from the best early on, just from their credentials and how much they were showing me. Originally, I did the super mundane, boring work in what they call the finishing department. What I did was, we’d get the mounts from the taxidermist and do the itsy bitsy detail work that took a ridiculous amount of time and detail, using epoxy putty to sculpt eye detail, nose detail, gear detail, a lot of airbrush paintwork involved.
At that time, I was driving about an hour and 20 minutes there. Eventually, I couldn’t see myself driving that long every day to do that job very long. But I was falling in love with it pretty quickly. I loved the artistic aspect of it. After under a year in that position, I was offered to take charge of their habitat department, which led me to get more into the trophy room side of the industry.
I was the manager of that, and in-house, we would produce or we’d build rocks out of artificial materials, trees out of artificial materials. If you see a life-size taxidermy base, it’s not going to look good if it’s just standing on wood. We did a lot of what we call habitat work in the industry, the bringing the outside, indoors.
It adds to the memories of the hunt. It was very detailed work. We would get pictures from clients of them holding up their trophies out in the wild. We would look at those pictures and identify the types of things like grass, moss and trees in the foreground to start incorporating that into the mount to add to it. Once you get into a little more of the money side of mounting animals there is so much that can be done after they are mounted to add to your add to memories to ally make it an elegant piece of work beyond what most people see as a dead animal on the wall.
Q: What’s the most unusual or challenging project that you’ve worked on? Do you have any favorites that come to mind?
BLAMER: For one of the last jobs I did with my former company, we worked at a trophy room that we had visited numerous times of a straight-up billionaire with a B. We put a life-size elk with this massive rock and three trees up on a fireplace mantel probably 15 feet in the air. There’s no other word for it than sketchy. Another one I worked on was hanging an elephant shoulder mount on a fireplace which needed three sections of scaffolding.
One of the interesting, funny ones I did which a lot of people will find a huge faux pas — and I don’t prefer stuff like this myself — but a baboon mount dressed up like a house servant. Not easy stuff to find, he was standing up straight and we put magnets in his hand to hold a metal serving tray. My mom, who is an amazingly talented seamstress who’s done wedding dresses, prom dresses and all of that, I had to go and ask her if she would make a tuxedo for this baboon. My mom got the biggest kick out of that. She said, “I usually don’t have to cut a hole in the butt of pants for a tail to come out of.” I also used epoxy resin to create the look of a full bourbon flask to go on top of his tray.
It’s something extremely different every day, which I love. You’re never going to do the same piece twice. Everything is different, which I love about taxidermy. Very few people want their amount to look exactly like somebody else’s. They want a one-of-a-kind piece, and being able to add those small details in allows you to be creative and use your creativity to make it a one-of-a-kind for somebody.
Q: What would you say is the most challenging part of both the taxidermy work itself and the restoration process?
BLAMER: I like to equate taxidermy to somebody buying a car brand-new car off a lot. It’s a huge investment. The price of everything is through the roof nowadays and if you don’t do the general maintenance it isn’t going to run as well or as long as it would if you did. Mounts are a lot like that, too. My business is primarily centered around that.
I’ve done a lot of bars and restaurants, one of the first jobs I had was working on mounts for a friend who owned the Sportsman’s Bar in Newaygo. I want to build my client base to potentially create a subscription-based cleaning and restoration service for larger businesses that have a lot of mounted inventory. It’s not a one-and-done thing. It’s just like changing the oil in your car. If maintenance is not performed regularly, it’s going to impact the life of the mounts that people paid a lot for.
So many people don’t understand the complexity and the fragility of taxidermy. People are scared to touch it themselves, scared to clean it. So people use common household products to clean them that could actually severely damage the mounts. You don’t want to do that because your mounts will suffer.
A lot of people are surprised to hear that the insect problem is the number one issue you see in taxidermy. It’s the same insects that people used to use mothballs and put their fur coats in cedar chests to protect from.
Q: Are there any myths or misnomers about taxidermy that you want to clear up?
BLAMER: Many people refuse to look past the surface level of taxidermy and hunting in general because they only see the morbidity of it. A lot of people just look at hunters and even taxidermists as murderers, You will look at some of the more well-known taxidermists’ Facebook pages or their websites, and they’ll have an average two-star review, and say, “What happened there? They’re an amazing taxidermist.” If you start to read their reviews, 90% of their reviews are from non-hunters.
One thing beyond the surface level that I would say is that hunters and taxidermists are the best and most beneficial supporters of wildlife that you will ever find. They get labeled poorly by some, but you will never find a more dedicated conservationist or lover of wildlife and animals than the vast majority of hunters and taxidermists.
I had a lot of people ask me how I could justify working in the taxidermy industry, and it is truly an art form and the funds raised from not only North America, but Africa and especially around the world, go towards more conservation, anti-poaching and things like that. The vast majority of hunting dollars go toward restoring species in Africa especially.
A lot of people think that people can just pay their little sum of $100,000 and go shoot an elephant or a giraffe. It’s not a simple thing of going over there, like in Michigan and saying, “Oh, a deer. I’m gonna shoot that one.” A lot of times you’ll get over there and you’ll get a tag for an extremely old animal like an elephant or giraffe, and they are past breeding age or are old bulls that will bully other younger members of the herd. It’s very carefully calculated over there.
An old, mature bull elephant will kill the younger ones in the herd for breeding rights. Old bulls are essentially hurting the herd. It’s killing younger males coming of breeding age and doesn’t create the reproduction and repopulation needed. Essentially killing one elephant could multiply out into into many future generations.
In Michigan, with the DNR’s funding the vast majority comes from hunters buying tags and fishermen buying permits. there’s also been a lot of talk in the last couple of years about the wolf herds that they’ve released in the Upper Peninsula for controlling the deer population up there because it’s out of control. Many people were angered about them releasing wolves there and the problem is the deer population up there. It’s that there’s not enough food space to support that many deer and so many deer get diseases from that. Animal conservation work is very much a two-sided topic in a lot of ways.
Q: What has the response been like from the local community and the clients you’ve worked with since you opened the business?
BLAMER: It’s been very positive. It’s only been a few months, and I did get a ton of interest from my family and friends initially. You can’t just rely on that so I’ve been working to expand my client base and climbing that mountain. The response to my work so far though has been fantastic.
It’s really a word-of-mouth thing to expand. A lot of taxidermists will refer their clients to me because they don’t want to do the follow-up work after the mount leaves their shop. It’s not worth their time, but it’s certainly worth mine.
The taxidermy market is super saturated here in Michigan, which is why I ended up going a different way.
Q: Do you have any advice or no-no’s for people who have mounts or displays on how to care for them properly?
BLAMER: Without giving up too much information to knock my business out of the water, I would say the first no-no is using common household cleaners. There are products made specifically for taxidermy that are ungodly expensive, a gallon of the concentrated insect prevention treatment spray that I use is $460.
The chemicals in regular cleaners can really do a lot more harm than good. For regular maintenance, the best you can do is a Swiffer duster.
Q: Where do you see your business going in the next few years? Are there any new services or projects that you’d like to pursue as has moved forward?
BLAMER: I would like to get into larger retail stores. I’m really working on connecting with more retail stores, hunting stores and outdoor stores. I don’t foresee myself ever looking into hiring an employee because I enjoy doing the work myself so that it is done right.
In my previous job, I spent weeks at a time away from home and I’d been to every corner of the U.S. and some of Canada. It was just too much travel. I have so much enjoyed being able to take my one-year-old to daycare every day. That was why I left my previous job and wanted to start up my own company.
Being able to see my son Mack wake up, get him dressed and take him to daycare and work on my own schedule has been fantastic. The biggest reward already has just been being able to know that I can be as successful as I want to be based on the amount of work I’m willing to put in, and not someone else telling me what I’m worth or what I should be paid.
The number one goal in my business is just the flexibility it provides and to be able to be more present for my family and be a better husband to my wife Krista, and a better dad than I was able to be before.
Q: Outside of taxidermy restoration work, what do you enjoy doing in your personal life and what are some things that you want your clients and people to know about you?
BLAMER: I love the outdoors, that has always been a massive passion of mine before I even really considered the taxidermy industry. Considering my love for the outdoors, it came to me kind of naturally. I also play way too much golf, my wife would tell you that.
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