Tucked in the middle of a three unit business complex on Broad St. is Staten Island's only taxidermy and hunting supply shop. To score a meeting with owner Allen Palazzo, you need both a sharp eye and a flexible schedule. Palazzo admits to closing the shop around noon on weekdays, depending on the state of foot traffic.
That said, Wildlife Magic Archery Pro Sho & Taxidermy does plenty of business for a shop that's only been open for half a year. A recent visit revealed at least half a dozen deer and elk mounts in various stages of progress, with a similar number of bird species, including pheasant and brandt.
Before the tour, Palazzo took a few moments to discuss his business, his passion for hunting, and what it's like to carry a dead bear through the streets of Stapleton.
Looking North: Tell me a little about the shop. The shop is Wildlife Magic Achery Pro Shop & Taxidermy. How long has the shop been in business?
Allen Palazzo: We opened in October of 2005.
LN: How long have you been in this line of work?
AP: I've been doing taxidermy out of my house for the past seven years.
LN: What got you started in taxidermy?
AP: Being a hunter for the last 12 years. I belong to Victory Sportsmen (238 St. Mary's Ave.) up in Rosebank. Doing strictly archery and hunting. And, well, I decided somebody had to do decent quality work for the hunters on the island.
LN: What type of hunting do you do mostly? Is it bow-hunting exclusively or do you also use a rifle?
AP: No, I don't do any rifle. I strictly bow hunt.
LN: Is there any reason why you'd choose one weapon over the other?
AP: It's more enjoyable. You get closer to the game with the bow. Obviously there's a lot of animals you can't hunt with a bow -- birds and stuff like that. But there's a lot of things you can do with a bow. You can hunt elk and deer, bear. The bows nowadays are accurate out to 70 yards. There's a lot of competitions for the bow. Big competitions. Vegas, Atlantic City, Pittsburgh, PA, Kentucky. So we travel a lot, too, doing archery competitions as well as just hunting.
LN: By competitions...are they like target competitions or actual game hunting competitions?
AP: No, they're actually target competitions. They're established pretty much all over the U.S. Some of the shoots are worldwide. People come in to shoot these competitions. Some of them are big money shoots, million dollar prizes.
LN: Have you ever shot for prize money?
AP: No. I don't get into the prize money. For me, it's just more to shoot for fun.
LN: So does the taxidermy start just because you kill things and you wanted to have them mounted.
AP: Yeah, I started doing it basically my first year. What I had harvested I had done by a taxidermist, and he didn't do that great of a job, and it was sittin' at the coffee table with my mother.... and sick of my office job and turn around and sayin' "What am I gonna do?" Being so involved in the sport? It was go to taxidermy school. There was no one else on the island, so do it that way.
LN: What were you doing previously?
AP: I worked for Dun & Bradstreet.
LN: So it was kind of a career change?
AP: Yeah. It was pretty much that. I got sick of workin' for big corporations and everything else and figured I'd try it on my own.
LN: So what is taxidermy school? What do you have to do for that?
AP: Basically, I was away for a good 12 weeks. They show you exactly how to mount the animals and prepare them. It's not just taking the skin and putting them over the form. It's a little bit more involved than that. You have to actually cut and make these little incisions. If your hand is shaky, you can put a lot of holes in that animal.
LN: Are some animals more challenging than others?
AP: Yeah. Depending on the detail work. Basically, all the animals are the same: You have a shoulder mount and then you have a life-sized mount. There's more entailed in doing a life sized (mount). Also, just putting the animal together, trying to make them look as realistic as they were in the woods is a major challenge.
LN: Are there any ethics to taxidermy? For example, is it not OK to make the animal look like it's attacking you if it didn't attack you?
AP: Uh, I don't...what you're actually referring to is an open-mouth mount. I prefer not to do them. I do have guys that want them, who want to have a bear standing full upright with its teeth showing. I don't have a problem doing it, but if that's what the customer wants, that's what the customer gets.
LN: Speaking of customers, are you getting a lot of customers at this location? How do people find you?
AP: This industry is basically all word of mouth. I do have people call. I have a website. People find the website and they call. Taxidermy is becoming a big industry in fashion, believe it or not. I get a lot of calls for fashion shoots. They want to buy animals just to put 'em in with models and display them.
LN: Manhattan-type fashion shoots?
AP: Yeah.
LN: What made you pick this location (Broad Street)?
AP: My location wasn't too much of a concern to me, because basically this is a word of mouth (business) and these guys are really sick of having to go out to Jersey to get work done on their bows. They're looking for somebody good close by in the taxidermy area, so location wasn't a big issue. I could really have opened up anywhere, but the rent was reasonable.That's one of the reasons why I chose the location, basically on the rent.
LN: Are most of your customers coming from Staten Island?
AP: I have people as far as Jersey coming to me for the taxidermy work. I have people from Long Island, Queens, Manhattan. So I'm gettin' people from all over.
LN: Where do you go if you want to hunt around here?
AP: You can go as close as 30 miles into New Jersey. There's state land available to hunters. You also have private land. I have pieces of land where I only have two acres and I'm allowed to bow hunt. People's backyards. The deer herds are so out of control in the state of New Jersey that really, as long as you get permission, you can hunt anywhere in New Jersey.
LN: Do you have to get tags to hunt over there?
AP: You have to buy a license, same as the State of New York. The license runs you about $135.50 for the bow season. If you want to hunt with the shotgun, it's another 135.50. It's a little bit expensive [in Jersey], but it's also only an hour away. You could drive upstate and now you have to lease a piece of land and it could cost you anywhere from $400 to $1,000 to lease a piece of land for the hunting season. Now you also have to pay for hotels and meals for the weekend and gas. It becomes really expensive. It's not a cheap hobby.
LN: But it seems to be a pretty fun one for the guys who take it up. People who hunt seem to really get into it.
AP: There are guys who are diehards, who will travel. I've got people I do taxidermy work for, they go to Africa. Every year. Sometimes that's all they'll do. Then I have guys, friends of mine, I have one friend who went to Maryland, Jersey this year, New York, Pennsylvania, Kansas and Illinois. He drove all over the U.S., huntin' the white tail this year.
LN: Can you hunt in the five boroughs?
AP: There is no hunting in the five boroughs. It's against the law to carry any firearms, even a bow and arrow, unless it's locked in a case. The only two places you can discharge a bow and arrow or a gun are at a private club, a rifle range, or there is a place off of Richmond Ave. by the Carousel (Willowbrook Park). It's an archery field. It's open to the public. Or there is Victory Sportsman, which is located on Fletcher Ave. and St. Mary's, which is an indoor archery range. But you have to be a member there.
LN: Good to know. You mentioned that a lot of your business comes through word of mouth. Do you get any walk up traffic?
AP: I do have a lot of people from the neighborhood coming in. I did have an incident where we were bringing a life-sized bear in, one of the guys harvested. I had about 40, 45 people from the neighborhood 'cause they were just amazed to see this thing. And then when you tell them what you're gonna do with it, they all look at you like you're crazy.
But it's all enjoyment, y'know? It's all part of the job. I enjoy doing it. I could sit here and put a deer together which really takes me no more than a few hours, but I could spend days looking at it, deciding how I want the ears positioned or if the horns are set right or something like that.
LN: In spring there were all the turkeys walking around this block. Did you have any turkey encounters and, if so, does that give you the itch, make you wish you could hunt turkeys here?
AP: Not really. We did have an encounter. Last year I believe it was. We were at the archery club practicing our turkey calls. We heard a gobble, and we thought it was one of the neighbors screwing around with us. It turned out there were some turkeys standing right outside the building! We invited them in, but they didn't want to come in.
LN: I can understand that. Any work you do around here to train the next generation of hunters, youth archery programs or things of that type?
AP: We are looking, at Victory Sportsman, we are looking to do a youth program this summer. We're looking into it. We're looking at the funding, because that's a non-profit organization. We're looking at ways to get the equipment in that we need to train the kids and hopefully pan off. We have had shoots in Willowbrook. Hundreds of kids show up just to try. Where we've invited the public down and actually spent all day with the kids and let them shoot a couple arrows off our recurve bow or compound bow.
As far as youth bows, I do have some in. I have a six year-old that shoots. I also have a 13 year-old that shoots.
LN: Your own kids?
AP: Yeah.
LN: It just seems like if you're on the business side of it, anything that encourages kids to take it up would be in your favor. It used to be like a regular thing. You went to Boy Scout camp and learned how to shoot a rifle and stuff like that.
AP: Right. The Boy Scouts do train. In fact, we've worked with several Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts groups, where they had to earn their archery badge. We've had them come down. I know a member of my club also has Girl Scouts involved, his daughter's troop, where they had to earn their archery badge and he brought a bunch of 'em down and had 'em shoot for one day. We enjoy working with the public, especially the kids, 'cause that's who the future is. You have a lot of groups, Elk Foundation, Ducks Unlimited, they all participate.
I'm also with Hunts of Lifetime. I'll donate a mount to the handicapped through this organization They're basically finding people to donate their time and their land, so to let handicapped or disabled people fulfill a dream of hunting. It's become not just the normal guy. There's handicapped who can't even shoot. They'll use a crossbow. It's basically blowing into a tube that's releasing it, because they're fully handicapped. And it's a wonderful thing that they're doing.
Some of the places who are giving that land, the farmers giving the time for these people to come out and set up and do everything to make it worth something to these people, it's a big thing.
< B>LN: As a hunter yourself, what is it about hunting when you first started doing it that made you get into it. I get the sense that people who are reading this probably half of them will know about hunters in their family, the other half will hear about hunters only in the newspaper.
B>AP: Yeah, the thing that got me into hunting...No one in my family does it except for me. It's just something I always enjoyed even as a younger guy. Growin' up, being in the Cub Scouts, there was nothing better than sitting in the woods. I loved it. Deer meat is delicious. Now it's basically all we eat. I mean I got freezers full of the stuff at home.
There's nothing like sitting in a tree, watching the sun rise and just hearing the woods come alive in the morning. It's something that's just unbelievable.
For somebody who hasn't done it, take a walk in the woods. Even if they're not going to hunt, just go out in the dark. Sit there. And just get away from the city. It's a beautiful thing.
LN: How do you feel that hunting is perceived on Staten Island. I mean Staten Island has a lot of people that would go into Jersey to hunt. It's still got that rural edge to it, but it's also part of New York City where people think of meat as something you get at the pork store or the local Waldbaums. Is it properly received? Do people know enough about it to treat it with respect?
AP: There are people who do....who are confused by it, and that's fine. I've had a lot of people come in and just ask questions. They actually think there are people who think, 'I'll just shoot the thing for the horns.' Um, we harvest these animals not just for the trophy, but for the food.
Like I said, my family eats it. We just had a Super Bowl party at the Victory Sportsman, and it was all game meat, animals that were harvested. We had bear, elk, caribou, deer, pheasant, quail. Y'know? Plus we had our normal food: your pasta and your six foot heros. But a majority of the guys do enjoy the game. It's a very good food when prepared right.
That's also a turndown. If the food's not prepared right, people are, "Oh no, I've had it before. It tastes horrible." That's where a lot of people get discouraged by it.
Then you have the others, the anti-hunters who don't believe in killing. Well, you know what? It's not really killing. It's harvesting. If you don't harvest these animals, they do become diseased. Staten Island has a herd of deer, over 200 now. And, within the next five years, they will have a problem where they're gonna just come in and start killing these things for no reason.
And I understand. Staten Island's...we're 18 by...what? ...22 miles long? Y'know? Not for nothin' there is no room for rifle hunters to come in. And there's no room really for hunting whatsoever. But they will have a problem. A doe her first year will have a single fawn. Every year after that she will give birth to two. So you start off with three deer. Within five years, you will have a herd of up to a hundred deer. It can get out of control.
LN: Where is the herd. Is it over by Goethals [Bridge]?
AP: I have seen deer as close as Rockland Ave.
LN: Which means we'll probably have a few deer ending up as roadkill in the next few years.
AP: Well, yeah, you will have that. Though, I've heard a lot of the deer are in the dump area. But they're here, and regardless, they will spread out. Eventually. It might not be now but in a few years they will.
LN: So the city or state will bring in it's own hunters, you think?
AP: Yeah, they might bring in sharpshooters. No one will ever know. They'll never open it up. They'll never open Staten Island up to hunting. If they do, I would be amazed by it.
LN: What about the bear hunts in Jersey? That seems to generate plenty of controversy.
AP: Yes, it does. I understand why people...It's the thought of....You have the "anti" groups who say, "No, leave the bears alone." They don't...and I'm not saying they don't understand...but they don't realize...they're trying to protect them and everything else, but Jersey is growing. And they just keep building. You will start having bear attacks. By not culling the herd. You already have that problem with deer in Jersey. In Jersey you're allowed to harvest as many doe as you want a year, because of the problems.
You get these people and you have the people who don't let you hunt in some of the rural areas with the bow and even some of the towns in Jersey, the police department don't allow hunting. With the bow, if people are trained right, it's a very safe thing. I don't recommend it for a shotgun, but there are areas where you can have a guy go sit in your backyard and if he takes one or two deer out a year, that's helping your herd. Because if it isn't him, it's gonna be somebody else, y'know? It's eight guys hunting in one area and they're able to take out 14 deer in a year, that's a big cut on the herd.
LN: You mentioned that Jersey's growing and that houses are encroaching on the habitat, but if I remember correctly, bears are coming back all across the northeast. It was sort of like they were hunted out but now they're coming back. It's a sign that we're doing better with the environental management. Is that the case or is it more of a we're more encroaching issue.
AP: We're more encroaching on the land. We're knocking down woods, so now they're going to become more visible.
You have more deer up in the State of New York than you do down in Jersey, but there's not as many houses. There's more woods for them to roam without being seen, whereas in Jersey you do have them walking through back yards. You have a herd of 25 or 30 deer walking through somebody's backyard. It's not that the herds are getting bigger, yes they are, but there's less woods for them to roam in.
That's the main thing. You're destroying the environment per se in one way, but for everyone who plants in their garden or front yard, yeah, the herds are much healthier.
LN: I don't want to go down too much the pro and con avenue. Are you finding this location satisfactory? It seems like Stapleton is an "in between" neighborhood right now and I wanted to get your sense of it.
AP: My thought is...I had one gentleman who came in here and he asked me why I opened up in the 'hood. It's a neighborhood. That's all it is to me. I don't care what part it is. I was born and raised on Staten Island. I used to go to school up in Stapleton. People are people. That's it. Just because they don't hunt doesn't mean they're not friendly. Y'know? I know there's a nightclub down the block. One night I was here late and there was cops all outside. But everyone else comes around to do things, so why not set up an archery shop?
LN: What school did you go to?
AP: I went to [St.] Francis. High School.
LN: Where was that?
AP: They were up on Jackson Street in Stapleton. Now they've moved to Great Kills.
LN: Tell me about what you've got around the shop. You've got equipment for if you want to stay up in a tree.
AP: Yeah, those are safety vests worn by guys who are up in the tree, just to protect them from falling out. We do have incidences where guys fall asleep.
I've got bows, arrows, all the equipment used: calls, scents. Everything that you would need in the woods I have. My personal theory is that if I don't have it, there's no reason to.
LN: What's the most interesting thing you've worked on?
AP: I've done quite a few, mostly deer. Right now I'm doing a couple birds for the Parks Dept. for their exhibit center over on Rockland Ave. I did have a guy bring a lion in.
LN: Male or female?
AP: It was a female. It was actually something he bought at a yard sale. It was destroyed, and I had to refurbish it for him.
LN: How much of your work is that type of work?
AP: Refurbishing? Not much. I just get a couple guys who say, "I need this done. I need that done." Most of my work is my deer work. A lot of guys, that's what they focused on. I did get a couple bear in this year that I'm going to be working on soon.
LN: One more thing I wanted to ask: What about hunting with a bow? There are a lot of people who think how hard can it be if you're hunting a deer with a rifle, but it's definitely more challenging with a bow. Why do you prefer to hunt with a bow.
AP: Challenging-wise and more humane in my eyes. A gun kills by shocking the body, where an arrow causes bleeding. I've had deer where I've shot them at 20, 25 yards and have them walk away and not even realize they're hit. Where a gun, everything you hit with a gun, they're gonna run. It's a shock to the body.
LN: Does that affect the meat?
AP: No, not really. They say they do. I have never seen a difference in the meat. As far as getting a bow, you gotta get close. Mostly all your shots will range between 10 and 25 yards. With a gun, you can shoot out to a hundred, 200, 300 yards.
I have shot at 50 yards and harvested game. I don't recommend it to the newcomer or somebody who isn't that experienced. I shoot all the time. I shoot at least two to three times a week. It's a big deal.
LN: And there are times when you can't take the shot, because the arrow won't kill the animal, am I right?
AP: Yeah. Your best shot with a bow is a broadside shot or slightly cornering away. I wouldn't recommend shooting a deer looking straight down at you. It's not humane enough. It's not a good shot.
Basically, you're looking for an eight inch balloon inside the animal. You're looking for a lung shot where the animal will expire quickly.
LN: It seems like with bow hunting you really have to be...It puts you more in the role of a predator. You're not just somebody standing off at a distance. You really have to be more of an expert at the stalking, the patience. All of the stuff that seems to be the positive attributes of hunting that you want to encourage.
AP: When you're bowhunting, the majority of the guys are in a tree, so you're doing any stalking. You're not doing any walking through the woods. You're not doing a deer drive, where you have other guys pushing deer, because now you have a running shot.
With a bow, it's very difficult. It's basically sitting in a tree, six to eight hours, not moving. I know guys who go out into the woods and they're out by nine o'clock. I know the other guys who are diehards. They'll sit all day from dusk 'til dawn. It all depends on the people. The majority of people are successful. I've heard stories of guys who say, "Yeah, I hunt. I hunt. I haven't shot a deer in 28 years." You can tell the guys who are dedicated and the guys who really aren't, who just go to get away for a weekend. And that's fine, too.
LN: I don't know if you've been following the news story about Vice President Cheney. Do you have any thoughts about that?
AP: I just caught wind of it this morning. I haven't heard much, but I've also had several phone calls from the news and everything else, looking for people to come on the TV and talk about hunting. I just referred them to the DEC and let them handle it the way they want to handle it. I'm an assistant safety instructor for the State of New York [laughs] and that's something I would not want to get involved with.
LN: Do you think that's going to draw some negative attention?
AP: It might draw some, but it's going to be forgotten about pretty quickly. In most incidents, we've had incidents where the father and son were bear hunting in Maine and the father actually accidentally shot his son. Thought he was a bear coming right at him. And this was with a bow. It got a little dark, and if you look at a human silhouette and a bear silhouette, pretty much the same. You can't tell. That was a few years ago, but things like that happen to get forgotten about quickly. It might be a little bit longer, because of the scenario.
LN: Do you do any local safety instruction?
AP: Yeah, I have people signed up from the neighborhood coming in for a hunter safety course which is going to be held in March. They're just interested and want to try something new?
LN: People from the neighborhood?
AP: Yeah. People just walking buy, seeing the store, stopping in and asking questions. They signed up for the courses which are given by the DEC. They're looking to try something new.
It's not for everybody, though. I've had guys who've gone and shot a deer and say, "You know what? This ain't for me." I've had students who've come back and say, "I tried it a couple of weeks. Not for me. I gave it up. Too quiet in the woods."
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