Issues with the Artistry of Wildlife

[Firebird]

I keep thinking what we would tell someone who is trying to find a safari to go on-
Does the ph return your e mails/texts/inquiries?
Can you check references, supplied by the ph and otherwise? Are there “red flags?”
What services do/don’t they provide?
How much money are you spending total-how much are you being asked to put down? What does your deposit cover? Do they offer a written contract? What makes them better or worse than other safari providers?
surely you could all offer more questions to a “newby”
Based on similar comparison would you or would you not recommend/defend this taxidermist? Just a different way to look at the topic-

 

[Proneshooter]

If someone is working at rebuilding from an unfortunate situation, as seems to be the case here, then they deserve praise and encouragement. I didnt realise old Dennis had been through so much. I wish him well, but he should communicate better as others have said. Like all of us oldies he needs some young blood to take the reins.

Kevin,
I cannot abide by your statement. He outright lied to me about his time frame for completion. He quoted one year from the time he received the trophies. After 26 months he finally finished them and blamed the long wait on his heart attack, he had our stuff for 18 months before that happened. Then we schedule a delivery date ( I live 2 hours from his shop) and agree on a Saturday. Two days before delivery he calls and asks if I can pay him in cash as he is going through a rough divorce. Two days to get my hands on 10K cash, shit I work for a living I cannot just drive to the bank at my leisure, and besides his divorce is not my problem.
He did not bring a Zebra cape we decided not to have mounted, promised he would send in the next week, well this may come as a shock but no cape to this day. Calls and email have brought nothing but chirping crickets and we paid him $350.00 for the tanning fees. How anybody that has read this thread and still defend this guy is beyond me. Yes there are two sides to every story, but there are too many stories posted here to call BS on them. Oh and I know of at least 3 other people on this forum whom are having the exact same problems but are afraid of posting in this thread, lest Dennis see the post and possibly cause further delay. And I'm going to venture to guess there are many more out there that do not know of this thread. Screw it, I'm out $350.00 and a Zebra cape, lesson learned Dennis Harris can kiss my bright white backside, his quality work is ruined by his piss poor customer service.
John

 

[K-man]

Remember gentlemen that Dennis has publicly stated he is not taking new business, so the inference that he cares what we think or say about him doesn't work. He has freezers full of unfinished trophies to last him a long while. My trophies were to be completed long before his unfortunate health issues. The lack of communication started before his health issues, they simply got worse. His work quality for me and many others has been quite good. It is simply about total dead silence from someone who is supposed to be working for you, and his own deadlines simply being ignored. We cannot "fix" this through normal business practices.

 

[Tanks]

I feel like a rubbernecker at a highway catastrophe every time I come to this thread and listen to people. Wish everyone involved good luck sorting out their situation.

 

[Jeffrey Masters]

Sorry guys, I didn't mean to stir the pot. I posted, hoping that others in my situation might get a little relief from knowing he is indeed moving forward. The pics he sent me looked good, and the prices seem in line with what we talked about. He isn't taking new work, so lets all collectively hope and pray that he gets everyone's stuff to them soon. To those who have animals with Dennis, this is copied from his email to me. I hope it helps. "
Know that no ones looses anything.
Know your trophies are safe and insured
Know that work is being done everyday
Know they will be completed."

 

[Proneshooter]

Know that no ones looses anything.

If this statement is true, then where the hell is my Zebra cape. Probably used it to show someone else he did not loose "their" Zebra cape.

 

[fourfive8]

Me too- I wish everyone who has stuff waiting there the very best and sincerely hope it all gets sorted out! I have watched Dennis' posts here for a long time. Waaaay before his health issue, red flags were waving and warning lights were flashing by his interactions with customers and posts here. Reports of slow work and poor to zero communication with customers predate his physical health problems by quite a long time. Additionally, back when he was rockin' and rollin' with frequent posts here telling everyone how great he was he would also regularly and routinely trash other's work posted here. Granted, some of it was average and maybe left some room for constructive criticism. But, his criticism was not that and seemed very tactless. Overall he was arbitrary in criticism of other work for the sake of being so. I remember quite a lot of work being shown in pics that honestly was quite good and rivaled his but he would ALWAYS find some fault with it. I had a few candidates from Africa for his business through that time period, but the red flags were obvious, so I didn't send anything to him or even contact him. Life is short, I'm too old, as many of us here are, and to wait on and have to deal with and baby sit and accommodate such arrogant, self deluded egotists is not my idea of how to spend the little time we all have left in remembering our experiences.

 

[rookhawk]

Why do you all use this person knowing it will end badly?

Because he’s best in the world. There are perhaps 5 peer-level taxidermists to him in North America and their turnaround times at present are no better. The reason why everyone went with Dennis is he was a 7-day a week, 50 week a year workaholic that was turning around world-class work in 9 months on average. He’s now queued up and backlogged after his health issues, stroke, etc.

The problem wits Dennis was he was taking on work assuming he would always be able to work 70 hours a week, 7 days a week, 50+ weeks a year. He also has a clientele that is expecting fast-food speed results because that’s the speed he used to operate. That’s not happening anymore and there are a lot of people that want there stuff urgently and its not happening.

I’m not defending who’s who or what one should do, I just can say that as a past and current customer that his work is still best of the best and his current lead times for new work, even if 4 years for new intake, isn’t worse than any of the top-5 peers. If speed is desired for taxidermy, new work with Dennis probably isn’t the best plan.

I have a room full of Zimbabwean taxidermy under sheets in my storage unit right now, never to be displayed, as a reminder of what ”Fast and cheap” looks like. (Not cheap after all costs added!) I spent easily $12k on it. I’ll let Dennis take his good old time with my stuff as I have no need for more bad taxidermy.

 

[mark-hunter]

Taxidermy indeed is taking a lot of space at home, or trophy room. Investing space, time and money to cheap and poor taxidermy is bad decision.
So, this logic is very understandable.

 

[Proneshooter]

Because he’s best in the world. There are perhaps 5 peer-level taxidermists to him in North America and their turnaround times at present are no better. The reason why everyone went with Dennis is he was a 7-day a week, 50 week a year workaholic that was turning around world-class work in 9 months on average. He’s now queued up and backlogged after his health issues, stroke, etc.

The problem wits Dennis was he was taking on work assuming he would always be able to work 70 hours a week, 7 days a week, 50+ weeks a year. He also has a clientele that is expecting fast-food speed results because that’s the speed he used to operate. That’s not happening anymore and there are a lot of people that want there stuff urgently and its not happening.

I’m not defending who’s who or what one should do, I just can say that as a past and current customer that his work is still best of the best and his current lead times for new work, even if 4 years for new intake, isn’t worse than any of the top-5 peers. If speed is desired for taxidermy, new work with Dennis probably isn’t the best plan.

I have a room full of Zimbabwean taxidermy under sheets in my storage unit right now, never to be displayed, as a reminder of what ”Fast and cheap” looks like. (Not cheap after all costs added!) I spent easily $12k on it. I’ll let Dennis take his good old time with my stuff as I have no need for more bad taxidermy.

I had no"fast food service" expectations when I contracted Dennis to do our work. But when you ask what the expected lead time is and he tells you 12 months and takes 28, that in my mind is outright lying. Use him if you wish, but our interaction has caused Dennis the loss of 3 additional safari's worth of work from me alone, and I will never recommend his services to anyone. In 35 years of being in the residential construction trades, I NEVER treated any of my customers this way. If it takes you 4 years to get to someones job, tell them that up front and let the customer make the decision to either wait or move along. How do you think some of the people here whom have been waiting much longer than I did, have to read stories about people who hunted years after they did getting their animals back while they patiently wait for theirs?

 

[tedthorn]

If this statement is true, then where the hell is my Zebra cape. Probably used it to show someone else he did not loose "their" Zebra cape.

He lost my custom made Africa articulating wall brackets that I provided for my shoulder mounts.
Dwayne searched his heart out to find all of my capes and horns during the repo but low and behold the custom brackets never turned up.

 

[IvW]

Best not the best...blah blah blah.....so because some and himself regard him as "the best"....he can now make his own rules? Bullshit.....get over it...get your stuff back and move on....
Imagine an African outfitter carrying on like this dude???? Seriously??? Nobody is that good....

I would name and shame and never do business with such a person again....

 

[Firebird]

“Best in World” is a title won at taxidermy competitions. That means every year in every category there are new best in world taxidermists. There is never just one best in world-and it is not selected by customers but by taxidermists paid to be judges. It is a huge accomplishment but ludicrous to throw it out there as a banner to be worshipped

 

[Aaron N]

“Best in World” is a title won at taxidermy competitions. That means every year in every category there are new best in world taxidermists. There is never just one best in world-and it is not selected by customers but by taxidermists paid to be judges. It is a huge accomplishment but ludicrous to throw it out there as a banner to be worshipped

Try telling that to a Yankees fan!

 

[Firebird]

Go Red Sox!-good example though, new world champion every year and in every sport and in most categories of those sports.

 

[Areaonereal]

Came very close to sending all my work from a 2016 trip to the east cape to Dennis after a phone conversation and a receipt of a fantastic color brochue. Decided to have the work done by Relive in PortElizabeth as the year before and reasonably pleased with the results and pricing and shipping. Looking back on this glad it was done in PE and receipt in 10 month, and not dealing with the issues noted with Artistry of Wildlife. I hope Dennis rectifies these issues and life goes on.

 

[Dragan N.]

Because he’s best in the world. There are perhaps 5 peer-level taxidermists to him in North America and their turnaround times at present are no better. The reason why everyone went with Dennis is he was a 7-day a week, 50 week a year workaholic that was turning around world-class work in 9 months on average. He’s now queued up and backlogged after his health issues, stroke, etc.

The problem wits Dennis was he was taking on work assuming he would always be able to work 70 hours a week, 7 days a week, 50+ weeks a year. He also has a clientele that is expecting fast-food speed results because that’s the speed he used to operate. That’s not happening anymore and there are a lot of people that want there stuff urgently and its not happening.

I’m not defending who’s who or what one should do, I just can say that as a past and current customer that his work is still best of the best and his current lead times for new work, even if 4 years for new intake, isn’t worse than any of the top-5 peers. If speed is desired for taxidermy, new work with Dennis probably isn’t the best plan.

I have a room full of Zimbabwean taxidermy under sheets in my storage unit right now, never to be displayed, as a reminder of what ”Fast and cheap” looks like. (Not cheap after all costs added!) I spent easily $12k on it. I’ll let Dennis take his good old time with my stuff as I have no need for more bad taxidermy.

First, "best in the world" and so forth probably means that one or more of his COMPETITION mounts won at that year's show. The quality of a competition mount will not be the same as that of a commercial mount. If you have another high level taxidermist who is not as busy as Denis he may actually do a better job on your personal mount than Denis would simply because that other artist may spend more time on it. Obviously the reverse maybe true as well.

I would not say that Denis Harris is a better taxidermist than say Ken Walker for instance. I personally have never heard of such complaints about Ken Walker as the ones that have been levied against Denis for years- long before his recent health issues. I don't think the main complaint here is Denis' turnaround time. You have many top level craftsmen that have long turnarounds but yet have many happy customers- because they are up front about wait times and are in regular communication with their paying clients. This is where Denis fell severely short. And these problems started before his somewhat recent health issues.

Also I know people have a hard time getting ahold of Denis once he has a person's work but is it also as difficult to get a hold of Denis when you want to send work his way?? Or when you are inquiring about getting work done by him??

Now I don't personally know Denis but I have read quite a number of his posts over the years both on this forum and another- where I have been a member for years. One thing I noticed about him is he dishes out pretty severe criticism against others but he himself does not really take criticism well. For instance when people suggested that he improve his communication by hiring people- he started ranting about how in order to improve communication he would need to hire taxidermists to do the work while he answered phones and that as a result the quality of work he puts out would suffer. I assume this was a sarcastic remark from him- but if he suffers from a communication problem with customers it probably makes sense to hire a secretary or what have you to deal with this while he does the mounts.

Furthermore for years, online at least, he would bash African taxidermists to no end. If memory serves me right I think he even claimed that the work of even the best African taxidermists would be "average" in America. Yet, if I am not going crazy, I recall reading on here that last year he hired a South African taxidermist to join his team. Seems kind of weird for a guy who spent years bashing them. He has even on occasions tried to invoke "patriotism" to discourage the use of African taxidermists by saying that American hunters should support American taxidermists. Yet if we extended that argument then no American should go hunt in Africa because instead they should be supporting American outfitters/hunting guides.

It is certainly true that there is a big difference between excellent or "world class" taxidermy and crappy taxidermy. However, there is very little difference, at least to the untrained eye, between very good and excellent or "world class" taxidermy.

 

[Jörg Krüger]

Sounds like this could be a business opportunity for someone to start taxidermy

 

[rookhawk]

I encourage many of you to use African taxidermy. Their speed of turnaround and attention to responding to enquiries will meet your primary requirements in abundance.

 

[JGRaider]

Jerry Huffaker has no peer.