The genesis of Carlee Suire’s latest business adventure was a huge, full-body mount of a big wild turkey.
Not one in particular, just the idea.
“I didn’t want a giant, full-body mount of a gobbler in my living room,” said Suire, a 34-year-old electrical co-op employee from DeRidder.
But she loved to hunt turkeys, especially with her husband, Keith, and their 14-year-old son, Reese, and she sure wanted a way to preserve those precious trophies when someone in the family was able to fill a turkey tag.
She stumbled on it one day, looking at photos on the internet.
“I had seen a guy, I think, in Michigan doing something like this, and it gave me an idea about what I could do,” she said.
So when her son killed a bird during Louisiana’s youth turkey season in 2025, she started experimenting. She caped out the entire bird, washed, cleaned and dried the feathers, and began to arrange them on a black foam board that fit in a square frame that her husband, who owns Through the Woods Tannery, built.
Of course, the gobbler’s beautiful fan played a big role in the “trophy” frame, but also the primary wing features, the iridescent greens and blues of the back feathers, every feather that has a place on a big bird.
Voila, a finished product.
“I thought it needed a woman’s viewpoint, so you could get the whole body without it being a full-body mount,” she said. “I was completely self-taught. Every time I did one, I tried something a little different to see how it would look.”
Feathers & Frames
Somewhere along the way, Suire (337-401-6158) named her business “Feathers & Frames.” Keith Suire builds the frames – squares or diamonds – and she does the rest, winding up with what is a real piece of artwork.
“I’ll ask the customers how they want it to look,” Suire said, “Some say ‘Here’s what I want,’ and others say just to do it the way I want to. I’ll give them a photo (of a finished product) and ask what they think about it, and if they see something else they want, I will try and get it resolved. I have a go-to pattern I like that I’ll show customers.”
She uses the beard and spurs in different fashions in different frames, all part of the design and the customer’s preference.
It takes her about a week – working nights and weekends around her regular job and family fishing and hunting trips – to complete a feather-filled frame.
“When I get ready to work on one, I’ll wash the feathers, dry them and cut them to shape,” she said. “Once you start by washing them, you have to do it all in the same day.
“After I skin the bird, I’ll work on clipping some feathers, getting them all sorted by color, and I’ll measure them all, because you want to get the bird as perfectly balanced in the frame as you can. When I go to draw the pattern, I will have all the feathers of the same colors together so I can get them in the right places.
“I will put the beard down on the board and trace its outline, then I’ll go and put all the other features on. I want to lay out the body feathers to see how you can use them. I love those feathers on the back, their colors. I take a picture before I start so I can see the colors and figure out where to fit them into the pattern.”
Turkey prep
Suire advises hunters who want a beautiful frame full of turkey feathers to take care of the bird shortly after it’s been killed and tagged. Take care not to bend or tear any feathers, cape the bird, freeze it and mail it or bring it directly to her shop in DeRidder. She has had turkeys arrive at her shop in all different fashions by many different modes.
“Get the bird as cool as you can, as quickly as you can,” she said. “If you have it on ice, don’t let it touch the ice, because it will soak up water and blood can really stain the feathers.
Freeze it, but keep it up above the ice. Dry everything out. Cape it out if you want to.
“When they are killed and how they are killed really affects how the fan and wings fare,” she said. “I’ve gotten some big birds in that were really mangy, had some ugly gaps in the fan where feathers were missing or had the ends of the wing feathers chopped off. Fixing that takes patience. If something is missing you can fill in with back feathers, change the shape and size, or move the tail feathers around to cover the gaps and get them in the right places. You can really make the colors pop.”
