After 50 Years of Blending Art & Science, Taxidermy Doesn’t Get Old for Kim Christensen
Story and photos by Dianna Troyer
Ducks, their wings spread wide, fly overhead, while others are descending, appearing to land in the lobby of Kim Christensen’s taxidermy shop. Exotic pheasants and peacocks perch near the ceiling, greeting visitors with their lifelike expressions.
“The eyes are 1 of the most important aspects of a mount,” Kim says. “They have to be perfect to make wildlife come to life.”
Kim’s shop in Heyburn is a blend of a museum, art studio, and biology lab. Mounts of mule deer rest on metal stands in various stages of preservation. Hides are salted for 2 weeks in preparation for being sent to a tannery. Airbrush painting equipment rests on a table, awaiting his steady hand to tint an eye or ear.
Though he has worked in taxidermy for half a century, Kim is still enthralled with preserving big game and birds, helping hunters reminisce and retain memories about their adventures.
“I never tire of doing this,” he says. “I look forward to starting each 1 and making it look as natural as it was when a hunter first saw it. It’s never routine because each animal is slightly different. It’s gratifying, too, to have my work in museums and schools. 1 of the most memorable was a golden eagle.”
Winter is Kim’s busiest time of year. Hunters drop off their trophies after fall hunting seasons. When he takes a break from working on mounts, he looks forward to teaching about taxidermy and hosts local scout troops to describe the tools, supplies, and techniques of his craft.
“Who knows, maybe 1 day 1 of them will be inspired to be a taxidermist,” he says. Their most frequent questions are how the animals are stuffed and why they don’t decay. To answer them, he holds a bird form made from polyurethane foam and shows the scouts how wire rods are inserted where the legs and wings will be attached. The wire is bent into position, showing the bird as flying or walking. He then moistens the bird’s skinned pelt so it can be stretched over the form.
Kim shows other forms for ducks, geese, grouse, badger, fox, deer, or elk, and their jaws and teeth.
He opens drawers to retrieve various glass eyes in multiple sizes and colors—some yellow, hazel, or brown. The smallest, at 2 millimeters, are for mice, 14 millimeters for badgers, 20 millimeters for owls, 29 millimeters for deer, and 36 millimeters for elk.
“Most people never think about it, but the pupils of cats’ eyes are vertical, while deer and elk are horizontal, so they have to be placed just right,” Kim says. “They have to be perfectly level, too. To look natural, the socket and area around a deer’s eyes have to be sculpted and shaped with clay to be oval, not round.”
He points out that nostrils must be shaped and carved into the form, extending back into the sinus cavity to look natural.
“Besides the eyes and nose, you have to do the lips and mouth just right, too,” he says. When scouts ask how he started in taxidermy, he tells them about flipping through a “Sports Afield” magazine in 1975 as a junior at Minico High School and reading an ad about becoming a taxidermist.
“I liked to hunt pheasants and wanted to learn how to preserve 1, so I enrolled in a correspondence course and had a professional taxidermist in Hazelton be my mentor,” Kim says. “I did 3 pheasants until I was confident and satisfied enough to open Christensen Taxidermy and start doing other people’s birds.”
With decades of taxidermy expertise, Kim often reminds clients and hunters to slice behind the front shoulders when cutting the cape of big game.
Since retiring in 2024 from Heyburn Elementary School, where he worked as a janitor for 40 years, Kim has more time for taxidermy. His goal is to get through a backlog of clients and their animals within a year.
“It may sound like a long time, but there’s a lot involved with the different phases,” he says. “I always like seeing clients’ expressions when they pick up their animal. It’s like they’re remembering all the details of that particular hunt.”