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May 10, 2019
LoneOStar Outdoor News
LSONews.com
HUNTING
Artist reimagines game skulls as art
Creating art from domestic and wild game skulls helped Annlyn Osborn find her creative direction. Photos from Annlyn Osborn.
By Julia Bunch
For Lone Star Outdoor News About a decade ago, Annlyn Osborn was an art major at the University of Mississippi struggling to express herself on canvas. Eventually, she dropped the major because she never could find her groove. A few years later, she found an old antler sitting in her
parents’ garage, and it clicked: she didn’t need a canvas; she needed nature. Today, the 30-year-old artist uses animal skulls as her medium to create custom works of art. Her aesthetic is heavily influenced by by the Maasai tribe in Tanzania and Kenya that Osborn learned about while on an African safari.
Osborn was drawn to the way the Maasai use color to specify emotions and feeling. Sparked from that first antler that she painted in 2011, the San Antonio native founded Haute Horns to showcase her colorful skulls, encased with beads, crystals and natural materials. “When I finished that antler,
I asked (my dad) if I could borrow an elk skull,” Osborn said. “I bought all kinds of beads and it just came out of me. It manifested itself in a way that wasn’t sitting in my head — it just came out.” Osborn continued on, predominantly as a hobby, until 2016 when she took her business full time. Her work is in several home
decor stores in San Antonio, and Osborn has done a couple gallery shows, yet the bulk of her work is custom pieces. “Texas has such a wonderful group of people who enjoy (my work) and think it’s important,” she said. “My clients are so creative.” While about 80 percent of her Please turn to page 6
Soap made from wild boar fat
Two big desert bighorns taken
Scents straight from nature
Lone Star Outdoor News
By Lili Sams
Lone Star Outdoor News In 2016, John Michon’s Ingram-based company, which sold wild game meat to fine dining restaurants across the country, came under a predicament — an excess of wild boar fat. A customer failed to pick up his order, so Michon started thinking of a solution. He recalled his grandfather speaking of his childhood growing up on the family farm and soap-making from the fat of the pigs they owned. His idea was born. Through YouTube videos and soap-making forums, Michon learned how to make soap from lard and lye the old-fashioned way. After 15 or so test batches, “I finally got it down to something good,” Michon said. “After testing the product, his church group from Kerrville encouraged Michon to make the soap into a business. “Batch by batch the soap got better and better,” he said. Michon uses local ingrediants and essential oils to create his products. For example, the “Hunter’s Bar” consists of wild boar lard, 100-percent pure wild Texas Mountain Cedarwood oil and organic therapeutic grade essential oils.
Photo from John Michon
“If you are going (out hunting) to sit in the cedars, you might as well smell like a cedar tree,” Michon said. A hunter himself, Michon has never used fat from a boar that he has harvested. “I know wild hogs get a bad rap, so I wanted to create some awesome products and maybe help shine a positive light on the subject. Like the old saying goes, ‘When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,’”he said. All of the soaps are made in Texas, and can be found at local dealers around the state as well as online.
Amarillo resident Greg May was lucky enough to win a desert bighorn sheep hunt at Elephant Mountain Wildlife Management Area South of Alpine. According to Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s TransPecos Wildlife Management Areas Facebook page, May’s successful hunt resulted in a ram that was 11 years old and scored 172 6/8. May’s ram wasn’t the biggest taken through the public hunts program, however. Michael Howard’s name was also drawn to hunt, and his ram, also 11 years old, scored 178 4/8. “Both were really great rams,” said Justin Dreilbelbis, TPWD’s public hunting program director. “The biologists out there look for the oldest rams as opposed to the ones with the biggest horns, but the scores were incredible.”
Greg May, above, and Michael Howard took old desert bighorn rams in April. Photos from Elephant Mountain WMA.