Monthly Club Meeting

Dave Might

Taxidermy and Wildlife Sculptures & Models

Including fish species.

I think I was born hardwired to love and be fascinated by nature. I still have a “yard list” I made when I was about six or seven years old of critters I found in my backyard that my mother kept with my childhood things. This love was nourished by regular visits to museums and nature centers, and camping, hunting, and fishing trips with my Dad. I found myself wanting to preserve the beauty of the pheasants, quail, ducks, squirrels, and fish we would catch, and began teaching myself taxidermy at about twelve years old with books borrowed from the library. By high school I was mounting up ducks for my friends and my parents’ friends and work colleagues.

I enrolled my freshman year of college in Wildlife Management at Purdue University, in Indiana, but the out-of-state tuition costs led me to major in Zoology at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio my second year. I also took art courses there and began volunteering at the Hefner Zoology Museum. There, I prepared study skins and mounts, made natural history models and did illustrations for exhibits and, occasionally, a grad student’s scientific paper. It soon became a paying job. After graduation and an internship at a nature center in upper New York state, I continued work at the Hefner Museum as Assistant Curator. In 1987, the opportunity arose to work as a sculptor at the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History, creating life-size models of Ice Age mammals for their upcoming Pleistocene Exhibit.

The work at the Museum – now Cincinnati Museum Center – created all kinds of opportunities to learn new skills and improve my model making and taxidermy skills. On the side, I have always kept up my taxidermy work for myself and others, including creating fish replicas for the Kentucky Dept. of Fish & Wildlife’s Salato Nature Center in Frankfort, and other park systems, zoos, and nature centers. After reconnecting with the Hefner Museum in 2009, I began regular taxidermy work for them and taught an occasional small workshop in taxidermy, specimen prep, and exhibit design and production. I am currently working with the Hefner Museum in creating a “wall of cats” and have recently mounted a Snow Leopard, Cougar, Pallas Cat, Clouded Leopard, Fishing Cat, and Serval.

My enthusiasm for the art of taxidermy and creating natural history models hasn’t diminished a bit over the years and I plan on continuing into retirement – someday.