The buck appears before him in a glow of pixels, floating on the screen of his computer monitor. For Jake Walsh, each time he sees a new animal on his monitor, he feels a rush. It’s not unlike the feeling the hunter must have experienced when they saw this particular animal in the wild, that sudden flood of endorphins as the buck appeared through the line of trees.
What Jake sees now is an exact replica of the buck as it was in real life, a model he can turn and adjust and view from every angle on his computer screen. From here, he will transform this beautifully-rendered model of the animal into a physical object he can hold in his hands, feeling each small detail in the texture, down to the tufts of its fur and the curve of its antlers.
“Every animal is unique,” Jake says. “Every animal has its own life of stories, so I just feel blessed that I can get to do this.”
Jake has repeated this process thousands of times, creating hyper-realistic miniature trophy mounts of numerous species of animals for customers all over the world. His company, Rutt’s Mini Mounts, has rapidly grown to meet the enthusiasm. Each “Mini Mount” is a perfect replica, which is then hand-painted to capture every detail and marking.
The idea for the Mini Mounts came to Jake after he and his father-in-law each had a particularly good hunting season, securing their target bucks.
“I wanted to be able to share my mount with him,” Jake says, “and I would’ve loved to have been able to see his mount more frequently as well since we successfully harvested them on the same trip just a day apart, but obviously, mounts can’t be in two places at once.”
And yet that led Jake to consider the idea of creating miniature mounts, exact replicas of the full-sized animal.
“I was already familiar with 3D modeling,” he says, “and one night, I just stayed up until I figured it out. Later, I posted what I’d made online, just to see what people thought of it, and the post blew up. Since then, we’ve done thousands of mounts from across the world.”
Part of that demand is due to how simple the process is for customers. All they have to do is take a 360-degree video on their phone of their full-sized mounts, whether that be a Euro mount, a shoulder mount, or antlers. They send the video to Jake, who then creates an exact physical model, albeit in a smaller form, ranging from three inches to nine inches in height. The mount is then hand-painted and shipped back to the customers, wrapped up like a trophy.
Customers can also take a video of a mount, and Jake can create that mount in different styles, all perfectly matching the original. The possibilities are endless; he can turn shoulder mounts into Euro mounts, Euro mounts into shoulder mounts, sheds into full-body mounds, and everything in between. From the wilderness, to the phone screen, to the physical model, it all occurs seamlessly. And for Jake, each mount is a new hunting story he gets to experience.
“With every Mini Mount I make, I feel like I’m living an entirely new hunting story,” he says. “People reach out to me, and when they place their order, they’ll often tell me the story behind their animal, and because I see it so up close, I feel like I have this deep and personal connection with it as well. I get to live these hunting stories over and over each time I build these animals from scratch.”
If the recent rush of business is any indication, he’ll have plenty of stories to keep him occupied for the foreseeable future. At just 27 years old, Jake spends the bulk of his time running Rutt’s Mini Mounts, along with his company Raccoon Rigs, which makes stealthy climbing gear for hunters, which is to say, most of his days are spent thinking about hunting.
Partially because of their affordability (Mini Mounts start as low as $20) as well as their durability and portability, the Mini Mounts have found new life in all sorts of environments. Some people loop them on keychains and carry them around with them. Others hang them from the rearview mirror in their car. Some hang them on their tree as Christmas ornaments to be cherished heirlooms for generations, while still others simply keep them on their desk at work as a reminder of heartfelt memories.
“I really think people are responding to the fact that we’re able to preserve memories in different ways,” Jake says. “We’re allowing people to take those memories and bring them anywhere they go, because I know for me personally, getting these trophies is a defining moment in my life and in the lives of many hunters, so it’s really special to have that reminder.”
Running a business in the hunting space is quite the life change for Jake, who only began hunting in his early 20s after he and his wife, Delana, began to pay closer attention to where their food was coming from. Learning about factory farming disgusted him, and realizing there were no good local options for humanely-sourced meat, he began hunting.
Like many who did not grow up hunting, however, Jake was met with a steep learning curve, although he found himself continually encouraged by just how supportive the hunting community was to newcomers like him.
“What I have learned from the hunting community and from starting this business is that 99 percent of the people you meet are the most supportive people on the planet,” Jake says. “They’re so kind, and they’ll let you know what you’re doing right and how you can improve, and they’ve been instrumental in keeping me motivated. I can’t tell you how many people have reached out to me and helped me just out of the kindness of their hearts.”
The experience has only reaffirmed his belief that hunting, and starting a business in the hunting space, should be undertaken with humility. Understanding your own weaknesses and realizing your own small role in the vaster world is vital to creating a better world for humans and animals. It’s why he still feels emotional whenever he successfully harvests an animal, overwhelmed with gratitude for the animal’s sacrifice and for allowing him to feed his family.
And whenever he makes a Mini Mount, whenever he transforms the likeness of a new animal into an exact physical model, he feels that same gratitude all over again.
“That’s one of the reasons I love doing this so much,” Jake says. “I get to see these animals in such a personal, intimate way, and I feel so blessed that people are sharing their stories with me.”
Check out more of his work or get some Mini Mounts of your own at www.RuttsMiniMounts.com.
Login