5. Now take some excelsior, or straw, or fine, soft hay, and build up a false neck of the proper shape and size to fit the skin by placing the material around the neck standard and winding it down with cotton twine (Fig. 38). It is a very pleasing task to form a neck by this easy process, and impart to it the graceful curves, the taper, and flatness near the head so characteristic of the deer. You can show the windpipe and gullet by sewing through the neck from side to side, and forming a hollow from the corner of the jaw down the side of the neck, as shown in the figure. You now have the form of the neck wholly under your control, and your eye and hand will be held accountable for the result. Be careful to make the neck _much smaller_ than it is to be when the skin is on. The thick coat of hair makes a vast difference in the size, and adds perhaps half an inch, or more, all around.
If you are mounting an old skin that has for years been in a dry state and requires much powerful stretching to bring it out to its proper size, you will be compelled to stuff the neck with straw in the old way, so as to put great pressure upon it from within, and stretch the skin by sheer force. Of course you will lose many of the fine points, but very often a skin is so hard and refractory that it can be mounted in no other way. In working by this method the neck is stuffed from the lower end, and the neck-board fitted and screwed into place afterward.
6. Make the neck smooth by winding; make it symmetrical and true to nature, and try the skin on it occasionally to test the proportions of your manikin. There is to be no "stuffing" of the neck after the skin is once on, therefore the manikin must be made correctly.
7. When the neck is at last finished, work up about half a pailful of potters' clay until it forms a soft, sticky paste, and cover the neck with a coat of it about an eighth of an inch thick, to insure absolute smoothness.
8. Put a proper quantity of clay on each side of the skull to form the animal's cheeks, and enough upon the back of the skull, forehead, and muzzle to replace the flesh and skin that has been cut away. On no account attempt to stuff a fresh head with tow, or any fibrous material, for it is a practical impossibility to keep it from becoming too large. Instead of clay you might possibly use papier-maché, putty, or plaster Paris, if you prefer either; but clay has many and great advantages over all other materials. Plaster Paris acts too quickly to be of much real use, putty is greasy and inert, and papier-maché dries too slowly when underneath a skin.