Skull Hooker European Trophy Skull Hanger

At the 2015 SHOT Show, I came across a nifty little item for displaying European-style trophy skulls of deer and other game animals. It’s called the Skull Hooker, and like so many great products, it’s simple and effective.

If you’ve ever examined the skull of a big game animal when nothing is left on it other than bone, you probably noticed a large hole where the spinal cord once passed through. And if you’re like me, you have tried (with varying levels of success) to use that hole to hang a skull on the wall. And it can be done, but most of the time we simply stick it onto a big nail or something, and that gets precarious. One little bump or nudge can cause the top-heavy trophy to fall, and that’s never good.

I have one European trophy, my first archery buck, simply screwed onto a plaque. It looks pretty good, but mounts like that don’t look the best because the head is not at a natural angle. Deer antlers look best when the head is positioned more like it was when it was still part of a living critter.

Enter the Skull Hooker. Mount it to your wall, adjust the angle of the prong, slip the hanger into the back plate, and slide your skull onto the prong. Done! You don’t have to drill holes in the skull or screw anything into it.

They’re available in black or brown wrinkle-finish powder coat, and come in two sizes. The Little Hooker is for all deer species, hogs, aoudad, alligator, black bear, cats, antelope, gazelle, impala, and any other similar-sized (or smaller) skull.

The Big Hooker is intended for elk, caribou, moose, bison, grizzly/brown/polar bears, domestic steer, kudu, giraffe, wildebeest, oryx, stag, cape buffalo, and the like.

There’s also the Bone Bracket, which has a flat bracket instead of a prong. It’s designed for displaying sawn-off skull plates, and you do need to screw the bracket to the underside of the skull plate.

And if you want to hide the plain bone of the skull, they even sell a Skull Cap to camouflage it. This would hide uneven cuts, broken bone, ugly/dirty bone, and stuff like that.

Pretty good idea, if you ask me.

Russ Chastain

Editor & Contributing Writer Russ Chastain is a lifelong hunter and shooter who has spent his life learning about hunting, shooting, guns, ammunition, gunsmithing, reloading, and bullet casting. He started toting his own gun in the woods at age nine and he's pursued deer with rifles since 1982, so his hunting knowledge has been growing for more than three and a half decades. His desire and ability to share this knowledge with others has also grown, and Russ has been professionally writing and editing original hunting & shooting content since 1998. Russ Chastain has a passion for sharing accurate, honest, interesting hunting & shooting knowledge and stories with people of all skill levels.