Rating: 4-Star
I’ve added a few new calls to my case over the years but none have performed quite as well as the Knight & Hale’s. Back about four years ago, I switched exclusively to Knight & Hale diaphragms and I truly don’t see myself using anything else in the near future. Three calls in particular will grace my case as long as they make them – the Boss Beard, the Triple Beard, and the Spit’n Image Viper. The range in sound in these calls helped me to bag back to back long beards this spring season in Pennsylvania. You can produce the sweetest of purrs to the raspiest yelps imaginable to fool an old Tom in to falling in love with you and commiting to your set. I have nothing but good to say about the quality of K&H’s diaphragms and I am sure that they will add quite a few more beards and spurs to the wall. I can, with confidence, give the Boss Beard, the Triple Beard and the Spit’n Image Viper four solid stars.

If a picture can speak a thousand words then how many words does a trophy game mount speak? This week I have in my possesion a trophy; it is a special moment frozen in time. The special moment is when my nephew, Brian Galliher of Jennings County, Indiana, pulled this monstrous Large Mouth Bass from a local fishing hole. Now is this fish a state record…. no of course not. It is however going to be the most memorable fish of this young man’s long future of life in the outdoors. 

It is artifacts like this fish mounted on my nephew’s wall that will keep him striving to return to the outdoors time after time for the same success. If a picture can speak a thousand words than a game mount will whisper a million reminders and temptations to you to return to the outdoors that you love so very much. The skillful work of a taxidermist is extremely underated in my book. They bring to life our most valuable memories as well as our stories and freeze that moment in time for us to cherish forever. Today as I visited our taxidermist to pick up my nephew’s fish I was able to see a lot of species of animals in a wide array of different progress. I thought to myself “What a collection of stories and memories”. Could you imagine all of the hunter’s that had harvested these animals telling there stories together? Our taxidermist, Todd Buchanan of Buck’s Pro Mount, has a large responsibility on his shoulders to re-create each and every one of those stories. 

 I’m confident that all of these stories and memories are in good hands with Buck’s Pro Mount. Todd has been recreating these stories for hunters for over 27 years and does a wonderful job, after all he has been the recipient of multiple awards including the “Public’s Choice Award” from the 2003 Indiana Association of Taxidermist State Competition. 

Taking a trophy to the taxidermist is never a cheap affair, however it is a memory and piece of memorabilia that should last a life time and is worth the expense. The back of Todd’s business card summarizes this for us, “The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten”. So when the time is right, don’t stop and think about the cost of taxidermy, consider the reward of the trophy.