MuleyMadness Hunting Forums

So i shot a pretty good tom this year and i want to mount the fan but i want to get as much meat off of it as possible before i mount it because the last one i mounted i didn't get enough meat off it and it attracted bugs, so if anyone knows the best way to get meat off a turkey fan so it won't attract bugs sure would appretiate it.

I'll be honest with you on this one, I have about 10 fan mounts and for the first 3 or 4 I ever took I had the same issue. I would salt them and try to flesh em out and still get bugs. This is what I do now, NOTHING, after I flesh out the fan i get a stiff peice of cardboard and use thumbtacks to hold everything in place, then I stick it somewhere safe, outside in the shed. I let mother natures cleaners do what they will and after about a week or two I bring it back in and mount it up. Its amazing how clean bugs can get things if you just let them do their work. It sounds gross but they leave it clean and when all the meat is gone their gone too.

Well i've put it outside for awhile but the bugs didn't do much maybe i didn't have it out there long enough, i'll try the salt though. thanks for the info.

Borax soap will help also. That's what I used and it seemed to work fine.

+1 on the Borax. After you get most of the meat off, fan it out on cardboard and cover the meaty area in Borax for a week or so. The borax dries everything out.

Borax 40 mule team is cheap and works great. I have done at least 20 plus fans this way. Also, you have to make sure and cut the tailbone out and then scrape meat off right up to feathers. I will try and post a picture of that area later and see if that helps.

Agree with the other posters on the borax, it works great and is cheap. I just did two fan mounts and was able to get most the meat off, but used a little borax and it worked great. I also wanted to do the wings and did the same thing and let them sit with borax for like 2 weeks. 2 weeks later anything left on them was rock hard and had no smell. So try that and hopefully it works.

Thanks for the info and southwind if you could post that picture i would appreaciate it, thanks