05/20/2026
My name is Gregg Bensink
I'm from the middle of Iowa and live outside a small farm town called Pleasantville SE of Des Moines.
For over 12 years I've been cleaning and articulating skeletons and cleaning skulls and making artwork from a multitude of various legal animal bones mostly into flowers & decorative boxes.
I'm a licensed taxidermist and native animal game breeder ( badgers, fox, groundhogs and skunks )
*soon to be USDA licensed 🤞*
I've cleaned and articulated animals for zoos, nature centers, biologists, veterinarians, pet owners, farmers & ranchers, hunters & trappers, oddities collectors and teachers from all across the US.
I take over where the taxidermists say No way!!
I take whole dead animals *in any state of decomposition* and clear as much meat off the bones as I can.
I then I have a walk in room of a million flesh eating beetles to finish cleaning the bones of meat and my room is big enough to fit a whole Cape buffalo or Perchon draft horse or whatever ya got.
I then go thru a process requiring time but I throughly degrease all oils & blood out of the bones by leaching it out with heat in water and other additives. I then use a dangerously high percentage peroxide to whiten the bones.
A lil over a year ago I became self employed trying to do what I just described. After 8 years of working on my family upland bird hunting preserve and row crop farm my Grandfather's death forced me to decide what to do next to get by.
A year ago I was approached about teaching skeleton building classes with a nation wide touring expo of oddities and artwork and taxidermy you name it's there World Oddities Expo
I said yes! I've been teaching classes and selling artwork and skulls & skeletons in Austin, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Chicago 2x, Kansas City and Philadelphia
The people in our country are as diverse as our landscapes in this country and I'm having a great time leaving my cornfields and meeting so many people and having a great time with my students who take my several hour long class. I just talk & talk 😆
In one week from right now I'll be in San Antonio and having just finished my first expo day of two.
I am in need my friends 🧡 of connections with animal people around the US.
I have been extremely fortunate over the years to have met so many loving and caring and incredibly knowledgeable animal people as customers and I have had alot of generosity from them when they have lost beloved animals and gift them to me to do what I do with bones and keep those animals around longer as skeletons to admire and learn from just like when it was alive.
Ps. I have a wishlist of animals I hope to acquire or work on for my customers. * dead things*
Emu....never done one only worked on rhea & ostrich skeletons
African & Asian antelope
Cape buffalo or watusi ( a whole skeleton articulation would be amazing for you to have )
Toucan, flamingo, crowned, Stanley, Sarus cranes and cassowary any age!
Pygmy hippo
Giraffe
Bear
Snakes over 14ft long cause thats the biggest size I've cleaned and articulated so far two different snakes too
Whole Gabon vipers, mambas, cobras ( I've done a 7ft king and a 5ft Mozambique spitting so far )
Monkeys oh and tree shrews someone please have tree shrews in US
Pere David, red stag, fallow, axis deer.
Gregg's Bone shop on Facebook is my business page and examples of my artwork and skulls and skeletons
