Great effort on your first bird. Not trying to be critical, but there is room for improvement for future efforts. For anybody that wants to do this sort of thing for themselves, here are a few pointers:
First of all, birds often get really messed up when they are shot. They lose feathers flopping around (make sure you pick any major feathers up if you plan on doing some sort of mount) and a lot of their feather gets out of place and split. Often they will get blood on the feathers, as well. Naturally, when you skin out the bird, you must get all of the meat and fat off of the portions of the skin you are mounting. Get yourself a box of borax (laundry detergent area of food stores). This is a natural preservative that works great for bird skins. As you are cleaning the skin, rub the borax into the skin and keep pulling off meat/fat until the skin is clean. If you are using the breast plate in your mount, it is especially important to get the fat off of the skin in that area and the borax really helps in that process.
Clean the meat off of the wings by cutting the skin on the underside of the wing and removing the meat from around the wing bones. You can remove the bones if you wish, but leaving them will make it easier to stretch the wings and keep them in the proper position for your mount. Regardless, take care to remove as much of the meat as you can. On the fan, make sure you leave a good portion of the rump feathers below the fan attached so that you have adequate feathers there to achieve the full feather display needed when you stretch and dry the fan.
Once you have the skin cleaned, the best thing to do is to wash the cape (or the parts that you plan on mounting in some fashion). You can do this by submerging the cape in a water bath with a mild dishwashing detergent (Dawn) and somewhat gently cleaning up the feathers. After washing/cleaning in the soap, rinse the cape in clean water until it is thoroughly clear and clean. Let it drip dry and then take a blow dryer (any old hair dryer will work) and blow all of the feathers completely dry,...not almost dry, but completely dry. If you do this right, all of the feathers will come out looking "new". Once the feathers are dry, rub borax to the skin side of the cape and wings to insure they are properly prepped.
Next you need to pin (regular old sewing-type pins) whatever parts you are preserving in place to dry. This is usually easiest to do on a piece of cardboard. First, pin the perimeters of the fan, wings, breast (if used) in the overall position you want them to dry. Next, take the time to look over all of the feathers to make sure they are in place. Use your fingers or tweezers to repair split feathers and get each individual feather in its proper place. This takes some real patience to accomplish, but if you want your bird to look absolutely flawless, you have to take the time to do it.
As you are getting the feathers in place, pin any feathers, such as individual fan feathers, in place so that everything is uniform and symmetrical in appearance. After you have this all done, let the parts dry. This will take about two weeks for the feathers to set up where they will stay in place. While the parts are drying, you should take a look at it each day to make sure the skin is not shrinking and pulling the feathers out of position. If that is happening, you need to insert pins as necessary, and/or reposition feathers, so that everything stays put.
Of course, some folks don't necessarily want to go to the time and effort to do all of the above. But if you want the absolute best mount you can get, these are the things you need to do. Hopefully, some of you found this information useful.
