PAVILLION — Welcome to Bugs N’ Bones, a class not for the squeamish.
The smell of dead and rotting flesh permeates the air. It is a sweet-and-sour mixture of flesh, brains and decay, but Jennifer Hammock and her students don’t even appear to notice as they quickly move to their various stations to begin class.
Senior Susannah Collette grabs a clipboard and approaches the hunters who have been waiting outside. She takes down their information, including their license and tag information, and indicates where they are to take the deer head.
“It's unlike any other programs at school,” Bob Lightfoot said as he dropped off his deer head for the kids to clean. “The money goes here for the kids and program and its only about 50 bucks. It's a win-win and they are learning life skills.”
Bugs N’ Bones is a high school class where students can get business certifications and lessons that they would be able to use in several fields ranging from forensics and archaeology to business and taxidermy. The student’s skin and bleach deer, elk and other animal heads for hunters who are wanting a European mount for their trophies. The money is put back into the program and set aside for scholarships.
In addition to life skills, each student can earn these scholarships for each semester they complete. The requirement is to have done at least three semesters and to be a student leader in your senior year.
The Gory Class
The Bugs N’ Bones class is a youth science class and stresses personal responsibility.
Each student knows their station and immediately get to work. The freshmen are at the skinning table while the seniors float around, making sure that everything runs smoothly. Dermestid beetles from Montana are kept in a special dark room and have been bred to do one job – eat the meat off the skulls and get them ready for the students.
“The class is senior led,” Bugs N’ Bones instructor Jennifer Hammock said. “When the kids first start out, they will be instructed by the seniors on how to properly skin the heads. Knife safety and wound care is especially important. When knives are around, wounds happen.”
The process itself is straightforward and the class is run like a business. While the bugs clean the meat off the skulls, the students are there to make sure the skulls are completely cleaned and bleached for the customers.
“Usually the heads go immediately into the cooler,” Senior Collette explains. “Then the skinners will take it and skin them. Then they'll go to the bugs and through the boilers. After that we'll put them up on racks to dry them. Once they're completely dry, they dremel off the rest of whatever's on there. Next, they go to the bleach and sit in there for a week just to get all the yellow grossness off of there. And then they'll come to me to be glued.”
Susannah Collette assembles an alligator head at the gluing station. She says it is her first alligator to assemble and she enjoys the challenge. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
Senior Susannah Collette, teacher Jennifer Hammock, senior Kayden Sixberry, freshman Eli Hill and senior Keegan Spens at the skinning table. Freshman are assigned the skinning table their first semester and are supervised by their upper classmen. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
Susannah Collette checks in a deer head from a customer and makes sure his license is correct before accepting the head for processing. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
Students participate in the Bugs ‘n Bones class at Wind River High School over 3 or 4 semesters. A scholarship of $500 per semester is awarded to each senior who supervises other students in the correct procedures. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
Teacher Jennifer Hammock shows a customer the bug bin. The beetles prefer the dark and warm room. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
Kalen Pogue and Tunk Goeble Dremel an elk head. They are removing the last remnant of flesh before the skull goes into the bleach bath. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
The bison head is waiting to be glued back together. Senior Susannah Collette said it is like a jigsaw puzzle putting the skulls back together. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
Freshman Eli Hill prepares to begin stripping an elk head at the Bugs ‘n Bones class in Pavillion, Wyoming. It is the first station new students work at before rotating through all the stations during their tenure in the class. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
Once the hide is removed, the organs, including the eyes, are removed off each carcass at the Bugs ‘n Bones class in Pavillion, Wyoming. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
Tunk Goebel and Kalen Pogue work at the Dremel station at the Bugs ‘n Bones class at Wind River High School in Pavillion, Wyoming. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily)
The Bugs
“I had to find a new bug supplier for my Dermestid beetles,” Hammock said. “So they have a later start this year than normal. Right now, we're babying them and just feeding them a little bit of freezer burn, good meat before we actually start feeding them heads.”
Hammock must be careful about the heads she does feed the beetles.
“If it's rotten and has maggots on it, we can’t feed it to them,” she said. “And if the meat is dried out, then they can't eat it.”
That shouldn’t stop potential customers from bringing in their heads. Even when the bugs can’t eat the meat off, the students can still skin and boil them.
“The kids don't have a problem doing gross heads,” she said with a slight shrug. “We'll just boil them. If they want to be cleaned by the bugs, then it has to be fresh.”
“I'm nose blind from genetics, from my family, so I can't smell any of any of this at all,” Senior Keegan Spens said as he supervised the skinning table. “The facial reactions I get from most people coming to this class are quite funny. You can just see it on their face that this is not a pleasant smell, because most of it has to do with the boilers that we do. That's because boiled meat usually doesn't smell very good to begin with. Or any rotten heads that get submitted to us as well.”
Life Skills
Very few of the students plan on going into taxidermy as a career but they all agree they will be able to take lessons learned in the class into their future careers.
“I want to go into an archaeologist field,” student Tunkcius “Tunk” Goebel said as he paused from his work on an elk skull. “This Dremel work is a major part of that so I figured if I jump on here, I will refine my skills.”
He explained that you cannot rush the process and, just like in the field of archaeology, you have to take your time.
“You have to be gentle with it because if you aren't, then you get a little bruise, and it kind of makes the skull look a little jagged and messed up. That's about it. It's not really hard.”
For most of the students in the Bugs N’ Bones class, it is the business skills that they are most excited about.
“The goal is to teach the students customer service, how to work, how to be able to be relied upon,” Hammock said. “They can earn business certifications that some local businesses will take. The students are surprised at how much they've learned by just being immersed in the program rather than having to read it out of a book.”
It is not all about working on the heads either. Senior Kayden Sixberry was sitting at a computer, imputing information to track their customers and the heads. He said it was a boring job that most students avoid but it was vital to their program.
“It helps us keep track of where each head is at and how close they are to being done,” he said. “The really big thing is that it also keeps track of all of our license numbers when we take in heads. The reason we do that is because if we don't report it to Game and Fish, then we can get in some major trouble. It would be technically illegal if we did that.”
Although he has no intention of becoming a professional taxidermist, he said the class has been invaluable.
“I think for me I will be able to use the business portion for when I go into the actual business field. It will help me with understanding why you do things, why you do it this way, etcetera,”
It is these lessons that Hammock said are most valuable to her students.
“I had one kid who graduated last year who left here with seven business certifications,” she said. “He's getting his associates (degree) in business management and he has told me that that has really helped him.”
“I doubt I will do any sort of taxidermy work, but I do plan on running my own small business,” Collette said. “Turning out a quality product really does take quite a bit of time. You have to be super careful and you have to protect yourself. That's why all the disclaimers we have is to protect ourselves if a head gets broken or something. You have to reasonably decide everything. You can't just throw it to the wind.
As the class ended for the day, Freshman Gavin Kowlok looked up from skinning a head, startled. “Done already?” he asked, reluctantly setting aside his project.
As clean up begins, it is obvious the students enjoyed the work and are proud of the skulls that they helped produce in their semester of the Bugs N’ Bones class at Wind River High School.
Contact Jackie Dorothy at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com
The bleach bath at the Bugs ‘n Bones class at Wind River High School. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
The skulls are soaked in a bleach bath at the Bugs ‘n Bones class. The antlers are wrapped to preserve them from the process. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
After being soaked in the bleach bath, the skulls are dried and then proceed to the next station. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
An antelope skull at the skinning station during the Bugs ‘n Bones class at Wind River High School in Pavillion, Wyoming. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
Students learn about the brains of the critters they are skinning at the Bugs ‘n Bones class at Wind River High School. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
The bugs are bought as eggs, and the larva raised in freezer burnt meat until they are mature enough to start working on the skulls. The bugs can be finicky and refuse to eat meat that is too rotten. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
As the bugs mature from the white larva, they burrow into the meat and strip it off the bones. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
A bug burrows into the padding before returning for a feast of raw meat. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
Tunk Goebel uses a Dremel to get rid of any small remnants of meat off the skull. He plans on using this skill in his future occupation as an archaeologist. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily)
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
