Smaller trophy room ideas sought...

[Tundra Tiger]

This has come up somewhat quickly, though I've hinted about it with my wife and joked for years...

My trophies are starting to trickle back from Africa. We love our home but it has fairly low ceilings and does not have large wall spaces to display trophies. I've kidded about needing one "me" room for my stuff so that my wife can reclaim parts of the house. Within the last two weeks, she consented. I met with a contractor Saturday. As soon as winter departs fully - say sometime in June - I am on the list to have an extension added to our house for "me".

It will be approximately 23x16 feet. I fully recognize that's not much, as much as I recognize nothing will ever be enough, but that's what the area of our property and our budget allows. It'll be higher on one side (not completely sure how high - he's working on designs) and sloping to the other side, following the existing roof line of the back of the house (which is the second story part of our house). I'm thinking maybe as much as 12' or a bit more on the high side.

So what I am hoping for is suggestions, ideas, and/or photos if you're willing to share, for similar sized rooms. I know some of you are fortunate enough to have much larger but that's not my reality right now. Again, it's never going to be enough. I have two shoulder mounts being done from my first trip - a kudu and wildebeest... I have a bunch of Euros, including my cow buffalo. I'll have a bunch of tanned hides and a zebra rug. Also, I have a lifetime of N.A. stuff that I've never really done anything with because I've never had space - a crapton of whitetail deer and moose and caribou. A couple of the moose are large; a number of the caribou are large. They are mostly in storage right now. I've love to do antler mounts for them. Additionally I want to go back to Africa someday, and I have a goat hunt and a blacktail deer hunt planned for this fall.

Thanks in advance fine folks of AH.

 

[Bhfs300]

Hi Tiger
I put these in a thread about trophy rooms before.
But here are a couple photos of my room it is 16’ on this end.

the room has a 6’ bump out behind the bar.
The room is 28’ long but to the end of the bar is 23’.

I take a lot of photos so that space could be more trophies. A couple more photos of the other side of the room that is my built in office. Walls are 8.5’ other than where the vents are basement room.

 

[Philip Glass]

This has come up somewhat quickly, though I've hinted about it with my wife and joked for years...

My trophies are starting to trickle back from Africa. We love our home but it has fairly low ceilings and does not have large wall spaces to display trophies. I've kidded about needing one "me" room for my stuff so that my wife can reclaim parts of the house. Within the last two weeks, she consented. I met with a contractor Saturday. As soon as winter departs fully - say sometime in June - I am on the list to have an extension added to our house for "me".

It will be approximately 23x16 feet. I fully recognize that's not much, as much as I recognize nothing will ever be enough, but that's what the area of our property and our budget allows. It'll be higher on one side (not completely sure how high - he's working on designs) and sloping to the other side, following the existing roof line of the back of the house (which is the second story part of our house). I'm thinking maybe as much as 12' or a bit more on the high side.

So what I am hoping for is suggestions, ideas, and/or photos if you're willing to share, for similar sized rooms. I know some of you are fortunate enough to have much larger but that's not my reality right now. Again, it's never going to be enough. I have two shoulder mounts being done from my first trip - a kudu and wildebeest... I have a bunch of Euros, including my cow buffalo. I'll have a bunch of tanned hides and a zebra rug. Also, I have a lifetime of N.A. stuff that I've never really done anything with because I've never had space - a crapton of whitetail deer and moose and caribou. A couple of the moose are large; a number of the caribou are large. They are mostly in storage right now. I've love to do antler mounts for them. Additionally I want to go back to Africa someday, and I have a goat hunt and a blacktail deer hunt planned for this fall.

Thanks in advance fine folks of AH.

The 12’ ceiling will help a lot. Best of luck.

 

[Tundra Tiger]

@Bhfs300 ... Many thanks good sir; that is helpful in imaging using the space close to what I hope to have.

 

[Kevin Peacocke]

Obviously that high wall will host the majority of what you have, but how you arrange it there will greatly affect the feel and ambiance of the finished area. I would say keep the large and protruding mounts lower down or it will feel like it is coming down on you. Group things so you get a flow, using the edges or corners for the biggest ones. With today's interior design packages you can try different arrangements virtually before you bang in a nail.

 

[BourbonTrail]

I say temporarily put them up, so we can all critique the layout .

My tip, get some painters tape and put it on the wall with names of the mounts. That helps me visualize the layout beforehand as well.

 

[rookhawk]

This has come up somewhat quickly, though I've hinted about it with my wife and joked for years...

My trophies are starting to trickle back from Africa. We love our home but it has fairly low ceilings and does not have large wall spaces to display trophies. I've kidded about needing one "me" room for my stuff so that my wife can reclaim parts of the house. Within the last two weeks, she consented. I met with a contractor Saturday. As soon as winter departs fully - say sometime in June - I am on the list to have an extension added to our house for "me".

It will be approximately 23x16 feet. I fully recognize that's not much, as much as I recognize nothing will ever be enough, but that's what the area of our property and our budget allows. It'll be higher on one side (not completely sure how high - he's working on designs) and sloping to the other side, following the existing roof line of the back of the house (which is the second story part of our house). I'm thinking maybe as much as 12' or a bit more on the high side.

So what I am hoping for is suggestions, ideas, and/or photos if you're willing to share, for similar sized rooms. I know some of you are fortunate enough to have much larger but that's not my reality right now. Again, it's never going to be enough. I have two shoulder mounts being done from my first trip - a kudu and wildebeest... I have a bunch of Euros, including my cow buffalo. I'll have a bunch of tanned hides and a zebra rug. Also, I have a lifetime of N.A. stuff that I've never really done anything with because I've never had space - a crapton of whitetail deer and moose and caribou. A couple of the moose are large; a number of the caribou are large. They are mostly in storage right now. I've love to do antler mounts for them. Additionally I want to go back to Africa someday, and I have a goat hunt and a blacktail deer hunt planned for this fall.

Thanks in advance fine folks of AH.

I don't have many pictures to share with you, but there are many tricks to incorporate your trophies into the decor, even with low ceilings. While many hunters will bristle at this statement, the truth is shoulder mounts get rather monotonous and the decorating gets a bit unrefined when you've got 40 heads in a row on a wall.

Some of the things we have done to squeeze a tremendous amount of adventures and mementos into a relatively small home:

1.) Your best pieces should be pedestal mounts. Ideally, 2-3 specimens per pedestal. If you think you may hunt another animal that "goes with" the others in the future, the taxidermist can bury a hidden bracket in the pedestal to accomodate a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th mount on the same base. (e.g. eland/kudu/bushbuck/nyala sorta go together)

2.) Table top oval hardwood bases and "half body" mounts look really nice. They fit on bookshelfs and end tables. My son has a half bear with habitat on a tabletop mount and it looks way, way better than a shoulder mount of a bear.

3.) Not every trophy is "trophy mount worthy". We have a couple of bar trays around the house with booze on them and bottle openers and corkscrews. Warthog tusks and deer antlers were made into barware.

4.) Very, very nice hand carved european taxidermy plaques can be found on eBay, usually being sold out of places like Romania and Bulgaria, for what I consider absurdly cheap money. $40-$200. Getting a skull cap or euro mount put on a very nicely carved hardwood plaque with acorn and oak leave carvings looks very nice even by lady-decorator standards and you can put a lot of them interspersed throughout a home without being "too over the top"

5.) Rugs. The total "in fashion" designer look right now is those huge, very cheap sisal rugs that fill a room. The look then has rugs on top of them. You'll see cowhides, buffalos, deer skins, zebras, giraffes, all sitting atop these relatively inexpensive, huge, neutral colored square and rectangular rugs. We have a few skins in our living room on top of these rugs. It's out of the Ralph Lauren decor playbook for the current home designers.

5.) Horns on little cubes of African wood or polished stone. This is another in-vogue designer touch. I went over to one of the fancier "high end" furniture stores in Chicago and the place was loaded with eland and oryx horns (fake resin) that were just the horns and the skull caps, connected to a brass/bronze rod, connected to a cube that amounted to a paperweight. They were put on shelves and coffee tables. We have real ones of the same over here.

6.) Old silver urns and pitchers. Have some silver from dead ancestors? We put it on our shelves and fireplace mantles and stuff them full of pheasant feathers, porcupine quills, etc.

7.) Holiday formal dining room centerpiece? Yep, we have the one that's just some fake pine bows with pine cones and typical red bows, but pheasant and duck wings are woven into it along with more upland tails. It's sort of a European formal lodge look. It's another place to put hunting mementos .

8.) Hippo/Buffalo feet as pen holders and candy jars. Yep, you can set them next to the blotter set on your work desk. Large animal scrotums are turned into dice holders if you happen to have a bar for a bit of friendly gambling in the household playing bar dice.

9.) Leg lamps. No, not from a Christmas story, but giraffe legs as end table lamps or cigar ashtrays. Kinda interesting. Of course with elephant you also have the classic foot stools and foot umbrella stands and waste paper baskets too.

10.) Hippo tusk displays. They fasten the hippo tusks to a long hardwood box that fits nicely on top of curio cabinets or hutches so you can display something of interest on top of furniture.

11.) Ottomans. Yep, trophies can become ottomans. Designers make them and sell them in high-end stores for up to $5000 a crack. Way cheaper to have one made from your zebra or giraffe.

12.) Gun cases. You can have your hides turned into oak and leather gun cases or campaign furniture cases that can be elevated on scissor legs to be used as end tables in a home. Alternatively, you can always have trophies made into gun slips (what we improperly call "gun cases" in slang use today)

13.) Accent pillows.

14.) Horns from less-than-trophy quality impala and other horned animals can be lashed together with rope or wire to make a tripod base that holds a small wood or metal bowl for candy or potpourri.

A couple pics of just one tiny room in my house (my office) and how I cram in a tremendous amount of hunting trophies without relying on shoulder mounts and other space-consuming types of mounts.

 

[Jaegger]

Hi Tiger
I put these in a thread about trophy rooms before.
But here are a couple photos of my room it is 16’ on this end.

the room has a 6’ bump out behind the bar.
The room is 28’ long but to the end of the bar is 23’.

@Bhfs300 - thanks for sharing your private space & trophy room. There is allot of hard work & quality stuff going on - on those walls! It’s surely like telling a story from around the World!

Wife/I bought an old 1904 German Farmhouse some years back & interior renovations are me - meaning, detailed but slower pace than a contractor. There is a raw attic loft w/ timber frame, one is nature stone & below floor was the old school wood burn stove, w/ 16’ pitched roof & just SCREAMING trophy room - hoping to post pics, like you, this Fall.

Happy Trails

 

[Hunt anything]

When we had our house built we closed in the garage and vaulted the ceiling. I should have had 10’ walls but didn’t think of it at the time. My wife and I did the chair rails and my father built most of the pedestals and furniture.

 

[Hunt anything]

The above room is 24x16, and is going to take a lot of rearranging when my trophies arrive soon from my 2021 Safari.

 

[Fixfire]

I don't have many pictures to share with you, but there are many tricks to incorporate your trophies into the decor, even with low ceilings. While many hunters will bristle at this statement, the truth is shoulder mounts get rather monotonous and the decorating gets a bit unrefined when you've got 40 heads in a row on a wall.

Some of the things we have done to squeeze a tremendous amount of adventures and mementos into a relatively small home:

1.) Your best pieces should be pedestal mounts. Ideally, 2-3 specimens per pedestal. If you think you may hunt another animal that "goes with" the others in the future, the taxidermist can bury a hidden bracket in the pedestal to accomodate a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th mount on the same base. (e.g. eland/kudu/bushbuck/nyala sorta go together)

2.) Table top oval hardwood bases and "half body" mounts look really nice. They fit on bookshelfs and end tables. My son has a half bear with habitat on a tabletop mount and it looks way, way better than a shoulder mount of a bear.

3.) Not every trophy is "trophy mount worthy". We have a couple of bar trays around the house with booze on them and bottle openers and corkscrews. Warthog tusks and deer antlers were made into barware.

4.) Very, very nice hand carved european taxidermy plaques can be found on eBay, usually being sold out of places like Romania and Bulgaria, for what I consider absurdly cheap money. $40-$200. Getting a skull cap or euro mount put on a very nicely carved hardwood plaque with acorn and oak leave carvings looks very nice even by lady-decorator standards and you can put a lot of them interspersed throughout a home without being "too over the top"

5.) Rugs. The total "in fashion" designer look right now is those huge, very cheap sisal rugs that fill a room. The look then has rugs on top of them. You'll see cowhides, buffalos, deer skins, zebras, giraffes, all sitting atop these relatively inexpensive, huge, neutral colored square and rectangular rugs. We have a few skins in our living room on top of these rugs. It's out of the Ralph Lauren decor playbook for the current home designers.

5.) Horns on little cubes of African wood or polished stone. This is another in-vogue designer touch. I went over to one of the fancier "high end" furniture stores in Chicago and the place was loaded with eland and oryx horns (fake resin) that were just the horns and the skull caps, connected to a brass/bronze rod, connected to a cube that amounted to a paperweight. They were put on shelves and coffee tables. We have real ones of the same over here.

6.) Old silver urns and pitchers. Have some silver from dead ancestors? We put it on our shelves and fireplace mantles and stuff them full of pheasant feathers, porcupine quills, etc.

7.) Holiday formal dining room centerpiece? Yep, we have the one that's just some fake pine bows with pine cones and typical red bows, but pheasant and duck wings are woven into it along with more upland tails. It's sort of a European formal lodge look. It's another place to put hunting mementos .

8.) Hippo/Buffalo feet as pen holders and candy jars. Yep, you can set them next to the blotter set on your work desk. Large animal scrotums are turned into dice holders if you happen to have a bar for a bit of friendly gambling in the household playing bar dice.

9.) Leg lamps. No, not from a Christmas story, but giraffe legs as end table lamps or cigar ashtrays. Kinda interesting. Of course with elephant you also have the classic foot stools and foot umbrella stands and waste paper baskets too.

10.) Hippo tusk displays. They fasten the hippo tusks to a long hardwood box that fits nicely on top of curio cabinets or hutches so you can display something of interest on top of furniture.

11.) Ottomans. Yep, trophies can become ottomans. Designers make them and sell them in high-end stores for up to $5000 a crack. Way cheaper to have one made from your zebra or giraffe.

12.) Gun cases. You can have your hides turned into oak and leather gun cases or campaign furniture cases that can be elevated on scissor legs to be used as end tables in a home. Alternatively, you can always have trophies made into gun slips (what we improperly call "gun cases" in slang use today)

13.) Accent pillows.

14.) Horns from less-than-trophy quality impala and other horned animals can be lashed together with rope or wire to make a tripod base that holds a small wood or metal bowl for candy or potpourri.

A couple pics of just one tiny room in my house (my office) and how I cram in a tremendous amount of hunting trophies without relying on shoulder mounts and other space-consuming types of mounts.

Hawk! Sounds like you do this for a living. Lots of great info!!

 

[Denvir Tire]

I would suggest that one wall be vertical pine boards.
It makes a nice contrast to the rest of the room and it's easy to hang mounts or pics or anything in any place. No searching for wall studs to hang heavy stuff and simple to move, or change the display every year or so to keep it fresh and new.

 

[shotgungibbs]

Tundra Tiger, I'm very happy for you! My wife has always made sure I have room for my "shit" as she calls it. My room is 16 ft. wide by 26 ft. long with a ceiling that goes up to 13 ft. 6 inches at the highest point. I suggest you have a couple of beams running across it. My 2 beams were added later. Would have been much easier to put them in at the time of the build. I have a 1943 Thompson Brothers Canoe, and a 1930's duck hunting boat across the beams. My room is on the back of our 2 car garage with the only access to it being a single door inside the back of the garage. You cannot tell it is there from the outside. I have 2 sky lights, that do not open, for some natural light. No other windows are in the room. I used 4 ft. x 8 ft. x 1/2 " sheets of T-111 Fir wood for my walls. Stained and sealed them. Other than my Bison, Elk or Kudu (put those in studs) you can hang anything anywhere in the room. I carpeted my floor over padding and concrete, but wish I would have gone with a rustic wood floor. The ceiling is finished and textured drywall. I hope this helps with ideas for your project. You are more than welcome to PM me for any additional help that I can offer.

 

[PARA45]

TT, this is one side of my living room. When we were looking for a house I looked for high ceilings. Our home has 15' ceilings, and have plenty of wall space. I am one of those lucky b@stard who has a wonderful wife who doesn't mind "dead sh*t" on the wall as she calls it. The left side of the living room has my kudu, & wildebeest. BTW, my wife said to me that we have too much empty wall space and to get on it and go back to Africa. LOL!!! Oh, and I am in May. Good luck with our design.

This last picture is a more recent one, with the new flooring. If notice above the tv you can see bottom hair of my kudu.

 

[Tundra Tiger]

@shotgungibbs , @Denvir Tire , @Hunt anything , @rookhawk , @Bhfs300 ...

Thank you for the detailed responses, ideas, and photos... Outstanding!!! This is exactly what I was looking for. For those of you who have such spaces... I am jealous, but I'm hopeful to crossover from the land of have-nots to the land of haves at some point early this summer.

 

[Tundra Tiger]

@PARA45

One of the downsides of living in a pretty small community (2500) in the middle of nowhere with no roads in or out: you are largely bound by the limited number of houses that come open. I'd love to have found a house with high ceilings. Homes here - and don't even go there with building a new home - are hideously overpriced. Many are in poor shape and need a lot of TLC. We were fortunate to get the one we did at the price we did - I do like it. But it does not have trophy friendly walls at all. This addition is going to make me weep tears of joy.

 

[Rubberhead]

I love the idea of a trophy room but it's just not practical for me. So, I take a lot of pictures and, more recently, some video. I am already working on a "story board" for my first trip to Africa to make sure I capture everything I need to put together a 60-some-odd page hardcover book of my trip. That photo book will be my trophy.

 

[Tundra Tiger]

Good thought @Rubberhead ... Two fellows in camp when I was there are fans of photo books; I plan to pursue getting one done myself. I have procrastinated it so far; I need to get that moving forward.

 

[rookhawk]

Trophy rooms are cool, but trophy houses are cooler. If you can find ways to tastefully weave mementos of your hunts into the decor of the home it has a very refined look.

In my opinion, if you want to see the best example on AH of a "trophy house" it has to be the photos uploaded by @Red Leg . It's not overdone, there isn't a repetitive row of dead animals, its just knit together with stories of militaria, Africa, hunts, old arms, leather sofas, pool tables, etc.

Guys that find a way to make it work with the decor usually are permitted to let the trophies overflow into common areas of the home, whereas the row of 20 shoulder mounts is relegated to one room above a garage.

 

[Bhfs300]

I love the idea of a trophy room but it's just not practical for me. So, I take a lot of pictures and, more recently, some video. I am already working on a "story board" for my first trip to Africa to make sure I capture everything I need to put together a 60-some-odd page hardcover book of my trip. That photo book will be my trophy.

Do the book they are great to pull out and look at with all the text telling the story of the trip.

here are my two from 2012 and 2014!
Tom