San Angelo, Texas. Established 18 years. Three buildings.
Wood Wildlife: Their Best March in 20 Years
Chris built the shop over 18 years. Chelsea rebuilt how it runs. An interview about leaving paper behind, getting paid, and knowing what's in freezer 11 from anywhere.
“You can't get bigger if you don't go up. And MountMonitor has helped us go up and grow. 1,000%.”
Chelsea, Wood Wildlife
Eighteen Years in the Making
Chris Wood started in taxidermy 18 years ago, working birds in other people's shops before finding his lane in game heads and opening his own business. Wood Wildlife grew steadily from there, and so did the team.
The best hire was family. Chelsea stepped in to fill the office manager position, temporarily at first, and immediately started finding the places where a busy shop running on pen and paper was leaking time.
“I found some things that this business could be perfected on, and we started looking into taxidermy software.”
Chelsea
The Software That Couldn't Take a Payment
The first program their accountant recommended answered the phone but couldn't solve the problem that mattered most: letting clients pay their bills online. They tried other options. None of them worked.
“We needed to get clients to be able to pay their bills online. That wasn't possible. We found MountMonitor and since then we've never left, because it's just been amazing.”
Chelsea
Switching at the Height of Opening Day
There is no convenient week to change how a taxidermy shop runs, so Wood Wildlife did it in the least convenient one: December 2024, at the height of opening day, on the 30-day free trial.
Moving from one system to another mid-rush was genuinely hard. It was also, in Chelsea's telling, the turning point for the whole business.
“It has completely re-energized our entire business.”
Chelsea (lightly edited for clarity)
Customers Who Watch Their Mounts
Every job at Wood Wildlife moves through named stages, and customers follow along in the client portal and through automated status updates by email and text. The updates arrive with photos, including the customer's own field photo from the day of the hunt.
“They know when it's being received. They know when it's being skinned. They know when it's pre-mount, when it's being mounted, which taxidermist is mounting it. There's pictures all along the way. They get those status updates with their picture in the field, and they get to relive that hunt.”
Chelsea
Paid Before We Know They're There
Wood Wildlife's customers use pre-booking to enter their own details before drop-off, whether they're at a ranch or a meat locker. By the time the shop opens the cooler, the job and the payment are often already in the system.
“The pre-booking feature is completely amazing. They'll drop off their animals, they'll pre-book, and they will pay before we even know that they're there.”
Chelsea
Freezer 11, Shop Three
With Track & Trace, every specimen in every building has a tag and a location. And because every job carries its balance, Chelsea can see at a glance which jobs have gone stale and who owes money, then send an email instead of spending the afternoon on the phone.
“I can be in the Bahamas with a drink in my hand and I know what's in freezer 11 in shop three. I know who owes money. I know these jobs are stale. Well, they're stale because they owe money. We'll send them an email.”
Chelsea
The Results
Chris went back through the records to check. The numbers were not close.
Over the same period, Wood Wildlife purchased two new buildings and neighboring property. The shop now runs across three 40x60 buildings on 3 acres, with dedicated skinning, habitat, and finishing departments.
In the testimonial they published on our site, Wood Wildlife put numbers on the day-to-day too: “Since switching to MountMonitor, our monthly cash flow has tripled. Clients pay faster... What once took 20 to 30 minutes now takes seconds.”
“I know, because I've gone through all of our records, that in the month of March, in the past 20 years, we've got more money in our account than we've ever had month to month.”
Chris