Cuvelier wins third overall national award for taxidermy

Greg Cuvelier has been at this for a while now, and he’s stuffed everything from deer to mountain lions and 11-foot grizzly bears throughout his 28-year career. But don’t assume for a second that the esteemed local taxidermist has gotten comfortable or complacent: he spends most of his free weekends either competing in or judging both statewide and national competitions.

In July, Cuvelier, the owner of Greg’s Taxidermy in Aplington, won his third overall best of show award at the National Taxidermists Convention in Springfield, Illinois, becoming one of just a handful of threetime winners in the organization’s history. Twenty-eight years after he finished school in Spencer and launched his new venture from scratch, he’s cemented his legacy as one of the greatest to ever do it.

Cuvelier’s shop is stocked with the standard deer heads that casual observers most frequently associate with the business, but his skill set and abilities carry far beyond run of the mill jobs. He does fish, he does raccoons, he does birds as large as wild turkeys and he does larger mammals like the aforementioned bears and mountain lions. He clarifies, however, that he won’t do pets, but everything else is fair game.

“I’m slow, but I try to do it really well,” he said. “I want to do it right if I’m going to do it. And as far behind as I am (right now), I think people expect that if they’re going to wait that long, it better look good when it’s done.”

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