The Complete Deer Season Preparation Guide for Taxidermy Shops

By MountChief Editorial Team|Updated Mar 2026

Deer season doesn't start in October. For a taxidermy shop running it right, preparation starts in August. The shops that are still setting up systems and calling their tannery in mid-October are the ones scrambling all season. The shops that do the work in August and September run a smoother, more profitable fall.

This guide covers everything: capacity planning, intake systems, tannery coordination, staffing, customer communication, and compliance prep. If you're processing 100 to 500+ deer per season, work through this list before season opens.

TL;DR

Improvisation at 200+ capes in six weeks produces mistakes, mix-ups, and customers who never come back.
If you're doing 400 and trying to do production alone, you're working 8 mounts per week every week.
If you have 80 mounts in finishing going into October, you're not starting new deer capes from a clean slate.
During peak season, you'll get 5-15 status calls per day regardless of how good your portal is.
The volume is the same, the hours are the same, the tannery still takes 8-10 weeks.
At 20 capes per weekend, that's 3+ hours of intake time per weekend.

Part 1: Know Your Numbers Before Season Opens

Calculate Your True Capacity

How many mounts can you realistically process per week during peak season? Not the number you'd like to do, the number your bench, your skills, and your available hours can actually support.

A realistic baseline for a single working taxidermist doing deer shoulder mounts:

Skinning and prep: 45-60 minutes per cape (including borax treatment and initial salting)
Tannery wait time: externally controlled, not counted in your bench hours
Mounting (form, ears, eyes, habitat): 3-6 hours per completed shoulder mount

If you're doing 200 mounts per season and working 50 weeks per year, you need to average 4 mounts per week through the entire year. That's manageable. If you're doing 400 and trying to do production alone, you're working 8 mounts per week every week. Know which situation you're in.

Over-booking is the primary cause of timeline failures. The anxiety calls, the upset customers, the damaged reputation, most of it traces back to a shop that took on more than it could realistically finish in the promised timeframe.

Set Your Season Cap

Based on your capacity numbers, set a maximum intake for the season. This is the number of capes you can accept and still deliver on a timeline you're willing to promise.

Post this number visibly. Update it as you intake. When you're at 85% of capacity, start telling customers your current queue is running longer. When you're at capacity, you tell customers honestly: "I'm at my intake limit for this season. I can take your work but I want to be upfront that you're looking at a longer turnaround than my current customers."

Some customers will go elsewhere. That's fine. Better than overpromising and underdelivering to everyone.

Set Your Current Queue Timeline

Before the first hunter walks in, know your actual timeline. MountChief's queue dashboard shows you active jobs at each stage. If you have 80 mounts in finishing going into October, you're not starting new deer capes from a clean slate. Account for that.

Post your current queue estimate at the counter: "Current estimated turnaround: [X] months." Update it monthly.

Part 2: Intake System Preparation

Paper vs. Digital, Make a Decision Before Season

If you're still on paper forms, pre-season is the time to evaluate switching. Peak season with a new software system isn't ideal, you want to run any new system through a lower-volume stretch first so you're comfortable before the rush hits.

With MountChief's AI photo intake, a complete intake record takes 3-4 minutes per animal versus 15-20 with paper. At 20 capes per weekend, that's 3+ hours of intake time per weekend. Over a 6-week peak, it's the difference between keeping up and falling behind.

If you're staying on paper, at minimum make sure you have:

Enough pre-printed intake forms for your projected volume plus 30% buffer
Pre-made tags in sufficient quantity (figure at least 3 tags per mount, one for the skin, one for the form, one backup)
A clear system for same-day filing, not "I'll file these tomorrow"

Intake Station Setup

Set up a dedicated intake area with everything in one spot:

Camera/iPad for AI intake or paper forms
Tag supplies
Scale if you weigh hides
Good lighting (important for AI photo intake accuracy)
Reference species charts if needed
CWD zone maps for your state and the top 3-4 states your customers hunt

Don't do intake at your production bench. Keeping intake physically separate makes contamination easier to avoid and creates a cleaner customer experience.

Prepare Your Compliance Documentation Checklist

Before deer season, update your state's CWD zone maps. Download the current version and post it at the intake station. Know which counties are in restricted zones.

If you take out-of-state specimens, identify the current CWD regulations for your top 5 customer source states.

Build or confirm a compliance checklist at intake for deer:

State hunting license (number and state)
Kill tag attached and photographed
CWD zone status noted
Out-of-state transport documentation if applicable

Part 3: Tannery Coordination

Call Your Tannery Before Season

Call your tannery contact in September, before you ship anything. Confirm:

Are they accepting new work this season?
What's their current turnaround time?
Any changes to their preferred shipping packaging?
Any changes to their pricing?
What's their preferred schedule for receiving loads?

Some tanneries get overwhelmed if shops ship the same week. Ask if they have preferred load arrival weeks. Spreading your shipments slightly can mean faster turnaround.

If you're considering adding a second tannery this season, evaluate and contact them before season, not after your primary tannery is already running behind.

Stock Your Tannery Shipping Supplies

Don't order boxes and brine supplies the week you need them. Order in September:

Heavy-duty boxes appropriate for your typical shipment size
Salt (non-iodized) in sufficient quantity for the season
Packaging materials to protect capes in transit
Shipping label stock
QR tags or your tracking tag system in sufficient quantity

For shops using MountChief's QR tracking: order enough tags for your projected season volume plus 20% buffer. Running out of QR tags mid-season means reverting to a backup system during your busiest period.

Establish Your Tannery Shipment Schedule

Plan your tannery shipments for the season. A common pattern for a mid-volume shop:

First load: early January (capes from first two weeks of season, after initial salt/borax treatment)
Second load: late January / early February (remaining peak season capes)
Third load: March or April if needed (stragglers, late-season work)

Having a schedule prevents accumulation. The worst pattern is waiting until you have "enough" capes to justify shipping, which sometimes means 3-month-old prepped hides sitting in staging while you wait for the pile to grow.

Part 4: Customer Communication Setup

Write Your Intake Communication

Before season, write and save the messages you'll send customers at intake. Don't improvise these on busy Saturdays.

Messages to prepare:

Intake confirmation SMS with tracking link
Intake confirmation email (more detailed version)
Tannery shipment notification
Tannery return notification
Ready for pickup notification

If you're using MountChief, set up these templates in Settings > Message Templates. They'll send automatically when you move a job to the corresponding stage.

The key information every intake confirmation should include:

Species and mount type confirmed
Deposit received
Tracking link
Current estimated turnaround (specific range, not "several months")
Your contact information

Update Your Hold Time Statement

If your turnaround time has changed from last season, update any posted information, website, Facebook, the intake counter sign. A customer who saw "8-10 months" on your website six months ago and is now being told "12-14 months" at intake feels misled, even if nothing was intentionally deceptive.

Honest and current is always better than optimistic and stale.

Prepare Your Status Call Response

During peak season, you'll get 5-15 status calls per day regardless of how good your portal is. Prepare a standard response you can deliver in under 60 seconds:

"Let me pull up your record, what's your last name? [Search MountChief.] I've got you right here. Your cape is currently [stage]. I expect to start production around [timeframe]. I also sent you a tracking link when you dropped off, if you didn't get it, I can resend it right now. Want me to do that?"

Practice this until it's automatic. You want to resolve the call fast and redirect them to the portal for future checks.

Part 5: Staffing and Workflow Prep

Realistic Assessment of Help Needed

If you're a solo operator, be honest about what's realistic this season. Can you do intake, production, customer communication, and tannery management alone at your projected volume?

Many one-person shops bring in part-time help specifically for October-November intake handling. This doesn't have to be another taxidermist, a reliable person who can photograph specimens, confirm intake forms, attach tags, and answer phones handles 70% of the intake workload while you focus on production.

If you're using MountChief's AI intake, training a non-taxidermist to handle intake takes a few hours. They photograph the specimen, confirm the AI-filled fields, and print the tag. You review flagged issues.

Plan Your Peak Season Hours

Deer season will require longer hours. That's unavoidable. But decide in advance what "longer hours" means, not infinitely longer. Burning out in November leads to production mistakes and finished work that doesn't meet your standards.

Set reasonable season hours and communicate them. If you're staying until 6pm on weekdays during deer season, make sure customers know. If you're open Saturdays from 7am-noon during peak season, post that.

The hours you don't set in advance, customers will set for you, and they'll set them at their convenience.

Set Up Your Production Queue System

Before season, organize your production space. Clear anything that's been lingering from the previous year. Know where things are.

Set up a physical staging area for:

Incoming fresh capes (just arrived, not yet processed)
Prepped and salted hides (awaiting tannery)
Returned tanned hides (staging for mounting)
Active production mounts
Finished mounts awaiting pickup

Physical organization maps to the digital stages in MountChief. When your physical space is organized, updating the digital stages is faster and more accurate.

Part 6: Compliance Pre-Season Checklist

Before October:

[ ] State commercial taxidermist license current
[ ] Any required state or federal permits current
[ ] CWD zone maps downloaded and posted at intake
[ ] Federal duck stamp requirements reviewed and intake form updated
[ ] CITES documentation requirements confirmed for species you expect this season
[ ] Intake forms updated with any regulatory changes from the past year
[ ] Records retention reviewed, properly archive or dispose of records past your retention period

Part 7: Technology and Systems Check

Test Your Intake System Before Season

Run five practice intakes using your actual intake process before the first real customer arrives. If you're using MountChief, do test intakes until the workflow is automatic. Photograph the AI intake, confirm the fields, print the tag, attach it.

Fix any friction points now. Every second of hesitation during peak season costs you.

Test Your Customer Communication

Send yourself the intake confirmation text. Click the tracking link. Does it look right? Is your shop name and logo displayed? Does it update when you change a job stage?

Send a test "ready for pickup" message. Check it on a phone, not just your desktop.

Find and fix any issues before you've got 50 customers with real tracking links.

Backup Your Data

Whether you're on paper or digital, back up your existing records before season. For digital systems, verify that MountChief is backing up to the cloud. For paper, photograph your key records and keep the images in a cloud drive.

A shop fire, flood, or computer failure in October is a catastrophe without backups. With backups, it's a very bad week.

What Preparation Actually Buys You

The shops that do this work in August and September don't have fewer challenges during deer season. The volume is the same, the hours are the same, the tannery still takes 8-10 weeks.

What they have is a system. When challenges come, and they come for everyone, a prepared shop has documented procedures, functioning software, prepared staff, and customer communication templates that go out automatically. The chaos is manageable.

The unprepared shop improvises everything. Improvisation at 200+ capes in six weeks produces mistakes, mix-ups, and customers who never come back.

FAQ

When should I start deer season preparation if I'm switching to new software?

Start at least 60 days before your first significant intake. For most shops, that means having software selected and configured by September 1. You want time to run test intakes, load any existing queue from the current year, and train any staff. Running new software for the first time during a November rush is asking for problems.

How do I handle customers who want to drop off before I'm ready to open for deer season?

Set a clear opening date and communicate it. "Our deer season intake opens October 1" posted on your website and Facebook handles most of it. For customers who call before your opening date, get their contact information and call them when you open. Don't start accepting specimens before you have your system ready.

What's the most important single thing to do before deer season?

Know your capacity and set a realistic queue estimate. Every other preparation improves efficiency, but over-booking is the root cause of most taxidermy shop problems, damaged customer relationships, rushed work, and burnout. Know how much you can handle, be honest about it, and stop taking work when you hit the limit.

How does this apply to solo taxidermy shops?

The principles in this guide apply to solo shops just as they do to larger operations, though the scale differs. A single-person shop may have lower absolute volume but faces the same documentation, compliance, and customer communication requirements. The practical advice here scales down to any shop size.

What is the most common mistake taxidermists make with deer season prep guide?

The most common mistake is treating deer season prep guide as an afterthought rather than building it into the standard workflow from the start. Shops that encounter problems in this area typically did not establish clear processes before season, which means every situation becomes a one-off decision rather than a standard response.

Try These Free Tools

Put these insights into practice with our free calculators and planners:

Sources

National Taxidermists Association (NTA)
US Fish & Wildlife Service
Breakthrough Magazine
State wildlife agencies

Get Started with MountChief

Deer season is the most demanding time of year for any taxidermist, and the shops that handle it best are the ones that prepared before opening day. MountChief gives you fast AI intake, automatic customer portal activation, and tannery tracking so your busiest weeks are also your most organized. Try MountChief before your next deer season opener.