Amy's Animal Art Taxidermy

Amy's Animal Art Taxidermy Custom mammal taxidermy services by wildlife artist Amy Ritchie. Based in North Carolina. Look for the verified checkmark šŸ‘šŸ»

This is the original page established 2015 (80,000+ follows), anything less is a fake account.

Happy Friday! This black coyote looks like a very well behaved gentleman. I wonder if he was like that in his living per...
05/29/2026

Happy Friday! This black coyote looks like a very well behaved gentleman. I wonder if he was like that in his living personality. The irony it would be, if he was in fact a troublemaker.

05/22/2026

Bobcat den scene inside a whiskey barrel ā€” Very cool!! The roots were from a Japanese maple of mine that didnā€™t survive .. a little detail that only means anything to me, I guess you could say, but Iā€™m glad it lives on!

When someone says ā€œhow much time do you have into a mount?ā€ that is a tricky question because I can easily calculate ses...
05/22/2026

When someone says ā€œhow much time do you have into a mount?ā€ that is a tricky question because I can easily calculate sessions like how long it takes me to skin the animal, and how long to sew it up. But itā€™s all the little things in between that we tend to forget. From the many conversations I have with my clients in person and by phone (whether itā€™s the retelling of the hunting story, or going back and forth over exactly what pose and details) to what Iā€™m doing today - choosing forms.
I find some areas of taxidermy to be simple in this matter. Deer heads? Thatā€™s easy. They come in a vast selection of poses and sizes. Typically I can measure a deer and transpose that directly and quickly to the perfect choice in the catalog.
But then you have the full body mounts! And a customer wants it posed exactly like a trail cam picture, and they want it to fit a specific small space above their cabinet. And nothing in the catalog matches up to that description nor closely in size to the animalā€™s measurements. Thatā€™s when I really have to put on my thinking cap. I sit here and I stare at this catalog and itā€™s like in my mind, I am overlaying the image of each form with what I know the customer wants. I have to make the right choice and choose the closest thing to work with. Do I want to stick with the most similar in position and make some size alterations? Do I want to choose something of the right size, while the pose is wildly different than what I need, and then change everything up? Pay attention, Amyā€¦ sometimes legs are much easier to move and shape than the whole spinal shape .. other times, itā€™s not. I sit here and I consider, and I think and I dig deep. And it really just takes a whole lot of my time. This is the stuff you donā€™t realize when a customer says ā€œyeah, I want it done just like thisā€. Some might just go with ā€œclose enoughā€ or say ā€œsorry, the catalog doesnā€™t offer anything like thatā€ but no, Iā€™m going to obsess over it.

Itā€™s been a couple weeks since I posted. Sometimes I just zone out and the next thing I know, Iā€™ve got a bunch of work d...
05/18/2026

Itā€™s been a couple weeks since I posted. Sometimes I just zone out and the next thing I know, Iā€™ve got a bunch of work done, some great weekend memories with my loved ones, and a lot of stuff in between.. and I realize the internet did not even get to know šŸ˜† Well, hereā€™s a mountain lion I got finished up thatā€™s heading for his new home in Nebraska !

What do you think of this? Iā€™m working on a custom piece today that will be fascinating to some, infuriating to others. ...
04/28/2026

What do you think of this?
Iā€™m working on a custom piece today that will be fascinating to some, infuriating to others.
Let me start off by saying - I donā€™t do mounts that I feel are disrespectful to the animal. No squirrels mounted drinking beer, no deer butt doorbells.
This client got this bobcat with his bow, which is a high level of skill. He wanted to replicate the moment of impact.
So here it is. The jump. The pass-through of the arrow. There wonā€™t be copious amounts of blood. The animal didnā€™t suffer, it was a quick finish. Iā€™ll admit I have cringed when Iā€™ve seen a common version of this - a deer mounted looking over its shoulder, nibbling the arrow, ā€œtrying to pull it outā€. To me that is very different. That depicts pain, a deer suffering from a poor shot.
This is certainly not for everyone but itā€™s what the client wanted, and I like doing something a little different sometimes.
So, what are your thoughts on a tasteful moment-of-impact recreation ? Iā€™d love to hear, and if enough of you want to see the final result, Iā€™ll post it!
(Now, if you think taxidermy in general is terrible, then you really should not be on this page and your opinion is not incredibly valid)

04/24/2026

The most thoughtful thing you can do
for your taxidermist -aside from not dragging your animal by a rope behind your truck or using a cannon to take it down - is picking up your finished mount in a timely fashion. Iā€™m not talking about rushing over within the week necessarily. Wait til payday. Go to your kidā€™s game, I get it. Iā€™m not even talking about picking up within a month! But half a year? Imagine, truly, what sort of storage space taxidermists would need if the majority of clients took six months to find the time to come by. Constantly rearranging mounts to find new space and stepping around them .. dusting them all off.. waiting on our final paycheckā€¦ Fortunately, itā€™s not the majority of clients. Itā€™s just a few, and that is a major deciding factor when a busy taxidermist is looking to eliminate clients that cause the flow of the business to jam up.

You could say Iā€™ve been working on a couple cats! A really fine looking wall of projects in progress
04/22/2026

You could say Iā€™ve been working on a couple cats! A really fine looking wall of projects in progress

We tend to think of ā€œplasticā€ as ā€œcheapā€, but this isnā€™t really the case with a lot of niche items. I just ordered a who...
04/16/2026

We tend to think of ā€œplasticā€ as ā€œcheapā€, but this isnā€™t really the case with a lot of niche items. I just ordered a whole pile of jaw inserts for the next round of bobcat mounts. After tax and delivery, each one of these plastic mouthcups are over $100 each. Thatā€™s a cool grand laying there on the table! There are cheaper options, but these are the best so thatā€™s what I use, no question there.
I can already imagine the snarls and panting expressions these additions will bring!

Iā€™m about to skin the piles of bobcats that were shipped in this week, but next week I will be locking down and working ...
04/09/2026

Iā€™m about to skin the piles of bobcats that were shipped in this week, but next week I will be locking down and working hard mounting bobcats for the next month. I always aim for a 12 month turnaround, but sometimes it just isnā€™t achievable. Iā€™ll be assembling cats booked in during April 2025, with a couple left from Jan-March 2025. Most will result in a 14-15 month turnaround. Not a big deal, right? Well, Iā€™m a woman who is serious about her goals and promises. However, I donā€™t regret the slightly slower pace Iā€™ve adopted this year ā€¦ a few days off for surgery recovery, or a trip with my kidā€¦ and in the shop, I simply just work slower these days. Sew a little more carefully, take a little more time for detail. The time that I used to put into two cats, becomes the timeframe I put into one. Over time, it becomes visible in the backlog. But what we end up with is a better mount.. and a happier ā€œmeā€.
Looking at my list this morning, the initial thought my brain wanted to tell me was ā€œYou need to give up your summer, Amy. Lock down, get ā€œBACK ON TRACK!!ā€
But what is ā€œback on track?ā€ My self-imposed timeline, impossible without grinding myself into the ground.
We never know if this is our ā€œlast summerā€
I want to feel the sun on my face

So, all that to say, be patient with me please. Iā€™m singularly the receptionist, skinner, tanner, assembler, and shipper. And trust me, you WANT it that way. There will never be an employee or middle man here to complicate things. You deal with one person, but the down side is that Iā€™m one person.
For all the spring cats I just booked in, quoting ā€œ12-16 monthsā€.. in the spirit of being realistic, it will be closer to 16. If anyone feels Iā€™ve had their animal too long, Iā€™ll be glad to return the hide. With most quality taxidermists taking at least this long, Iā€™m not sure why Iā€™m so hard of myself.
But I assure you, itā€™ll be worth the wait !

Address

339 Sawmill Road
Hamptonville, NC
27020

Telephone

+17044377696

Website

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