KIMBLE COUNTY, Texas — Kade Wimberly spends his day scraping the skins of other's prize kills. He is particularly busy during deer season as a taxidermist and co-owner of Crosshairs Taxidermy in Junction.
“I get whitetail, axis, black buck. I mean, you may see a red stag, you know, off a game ranch or something, some exotics, but mostly white-tail, lots of white-tail,” Wimberly said.
Wimberly has been practicing his craft for the last five years and enjoys helping families capture memories.
“They want to, you know, keep it for a memory more than anything. Just, you know, always look up on the wall and say, ‘Oh, I remember that hunt with my grandson.’ You know, things like that. So, I mean just hanging memories," he said.
When rancher Ken Hedrick pulled up in Wimberly's drive, he didn’t think much of it - until Hendrick pulled down the tailgate and showed him what was inside.
On Nov. 20, Hedrick was in a deer stand hunting feral hogs when he spotted something else entirely.
“This big cat followed the deer into the feed bin, and made the mistake of stopping too long,” Hedrick said.
He shot and killed a male, 138-lb. mountain lion on his property. The specimen measured out to 6 feet, 8 inches long.
“It was very difficult to walk up the feed pen where he was laying. And once I got to the fence and saw how large he was, it was more difficult to climb over the fence into the pen with him."
Hedrick was surprised to see the cat, and he should have been. According to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, there has only been one confirmed sighting of a mountain lion in Kimble County this year.
Hedrick knew the cat had been hanging around, though.
“We caught glimpses of him and we have a couple of game cameras with pictures of him on the ranch,” Hendrick said. “We noticed that the deer on the ranch were really skittish, more so than they should be. And we weren’t seeing the numbers of deer that we had been.”
After the carcass was taken to Wimberly’s shop, Crosshairs Taxidermy’s parking lot suddenly became full.
“The whole town came to see him,” Wimberly said.
The skin has since been sent to a tannery in Ingram and will come back to be mounted. The whole process will take six to eight months to complete.
“I just want a picture with it,” Wimberly said. “They got a spot on the wall ready for it, and I guess I’ll have to go out there to see it.”
Hendrick agreed Wimberly could keep the final product at the shop for a week before it goes out to his ranch.
“It’s going to the processing room at the ranch. That way people who want to look can come out and look without having to actually make arrangements to come to the house,” Hendrick said.
According to TPWD, mountain lions are not considered a game animal and can be killed at any time of year. Though if someone does spot a mountain lion, the department asks that witnesses report the sighting.