Outdoor Edge – Taking Care of Your Trophies in the Field

The work doesn’t stop once you pull the trigger and start taking your photos. In fact, it doesn’t even stop once you have the animal broken down and in game bags ready to haul back to camp. A huge part of the work still remains, and in my opinion, the most delicate and time consuming. This is where you want to sit down with lightweight, SHARP knives and really take your time in caping out your trophy.

Eventually the meat will be gone, but the memory of the hunt will live forever in your mind, and potentially on the wall! When you look at your mount, you want to have nothing but fine memories of that trip. You don’t want to look back and think about how the caping of your animal was like a botched plastic surgery. Which is why it is so important to take your time and use the proper tools.

Recently on our trip to Alaska, my crew of three hunters were all successful, and we filled our Caribou tags in short order on the Northern Brooks range. I did not shoot the biggest bull out there on the Tundra by any means, but it was still a trip of a lifetime culminated with my very first Caribou – and in full velvet to boot! I knew right away I wanted to preserve this epic memory forever, and would be reserving real estate in the man cave for this beautiful shoulder mount. For this trip, we had equipped everyone with several products from Outdoor Edge. You can check out the video we did of breaking down a caribou HERE.

We made quick work of the animal with the RazorMax and the Razor Pro and were quickly back to camp, albeit with tired backs and sore feet, and more than ready to enjoy a relaxing evening back at home base.

Now was time for the “finished carpentry” portion of the hunt. Check out the video below, where I walk you through how to cape out your trophies in the field. As I am sure we can all attest, there are often many paths to the finish line, and this is just the way I have done it for years. There may be some tricks and tips others have picked up over the years, but this is just my method, and so far – *knocks on wood – I have received zero complaints from my taxidermist.

All in all, caping your trophies is not all that difficult, especially with razor sharp Outdoor Edge knives I was using. The replacement blades are very affordable, and so quick and easy to replace. Do yourself a favor and head over to https://www.outdooredge.com/ and check out the RazorMax and RazorPro for yourself, along with the rest of their lineup of great cutlery products. Check back in few weeks when we publish the “relaxing” portion of our hunt, where we do a little sightseeing and head down to Valdez, AK for a few days.

We hit the Silver run perfect and there was no shortage of fresh chrome with every tide!

Andy Husek

Andy has been a lifelong Outdoorsman and has hunted and fished all over the world but his home state of Michigan is near and dear to his heart. He grew up fishing the Great Lakes and mostly hunted waterfowl and small game until his teenage years when he quickly became an avid big game hunter and embraced the art of long range shooting. With the help of several long range courses he has become proficient at shooting out to 1,000 yards with his longest confirmed shots being in excess of 1,700 yards. He has hunted North America from the northernmost parts of Alaska to the southernmost parts of Florida and everywhere in between. He has even made the trip across the pond several times to hunt in Africa. When he is not hunting or fishing he is coaching travel softball and watching his two daughters play the sports they love. In between hunts and when they have a break from sports he and his family enjoy spending time outdoors in the beautiful state of Michigan skiing, boating and camping.