Cabela's donates truck loads of taxidermy to CSC

Two semi-truck loads of taxidermy were shipped from the Cabela’s corporate headquarters in Sidney to the college’s Burkhiser Complex on Monday and Tuesday, Oct. 5-6. Included in the shipments were full body mounts of many large animals, such as moose, elk, African lion, mountain lion, caribou, grizzly bear, zebra and deer.

Ethan Teter, a sophomore from St. Paul who serves as president of CSC’s Wildlife Club, said he is in awe of the collection.

“It will be a great study tool for our wildlife management courses and other biological sciences,” Teter said. “It’s one thing to read about animals and use your imagination, but a full body mount really helps draw a better picture of what an animal is like in a natural settings and helps a person comprehend the actual size of a creature. The standing grizzly bear and moose, for instance, are just huge.”

Cabela’s officials decided to donate the collection after receiving an inquiry from CSC about the availability of one mount.

“I was planning to donate $750 to have a caribou mount for our growing collection,” said Dr. Ron Weedon, a CSC professor who teaches science courses for the wildlife management program. “Before doing that, though, I suggested that maybe we should send a letter to Cabela’s to see if they might have one available. Of course, the company’s response has exceeded our wildest expectations.”

Mark Dowse, taxidermy product manager for Cabela’s, said the letter arrived at their offices at the right time. He said the animals donated to Chadron State were in storage at Sidney awaiting display in new stores. However, they became surplus after the down economy prompted the company to curtail some of its planned retail expansion.

“This gave us an opportunity to reduce our inventory and give Chadron State a great learning tool,” he said. “I wish we could have given more.”

The official count of the donation is 65 pieces, although several contain more than one animal. For instance, one piece portrays an arctic wolf chasing a hare.

Dr. Teresa Zimmerman, the CSC assistant professor who wrote the letter to Cabela’s, said the mounts will be a fantastic visual aid for teaching anatomy and physiology. The collection also will serve as a tool to compare between species of North America and the African savanna.

“This is going to do incredible things for our program,” she said. “I can’t begin to tell you how much excitement this brings to our students and faculty.”

Dowse said he took special consideration of CSC’s learning initiatives while choosing pieces for the donation. For instance, he attempted to include a male and female of each North American species when possible.

Zimmerman plans to begin using the pieces in her classes immediately. She also expects them to be incorporated in the design of the college’s planned Rangeland Agriculture Center and Pavilion, which will house the wildlife management and rangeland management programs. That building is scheduled for construction following the completion of Chadron State’s comprehensive fund-raising campaign in 2011.

Cabela’s officials have asked that the value of the collection not be released, but Weedon says it’s best described as “priceless.”

Dowse said Cabela’s purchases pieces for its stores from a variety of sources, including hunters and taxidermists. When the company constructed eight new stores in 2007, it used 30 taxidermists across the nation to prepare pieces.

“The bigger stores that year had 500 to 600 mounts,” Dowse said. “I’ve been doing this job for 11 years, but I still find each mount to be unique.”