The best turkey fan mounts, and how to not ruin the fan before it goes up

How we picked

This is the thinnest-documented category on this site, and it is worth saying so before any ranking. Not one of these four makers publishes a product page for its own mount. Every specification below comes from an authorized dealer listing, named on each card, and where a dealer publishes nothing we have written “not published” rather than guessing.

That shapes the scores. We rank accessories on the accessory rubric published with our First-Season Score — documented function, ease of use, build, carry and weight, warranty — and for a mounting kit we read those metrics like this:

• Documented function (30%) — what the seller actually tells you the mount holds: the fan, how many beards, the spurs, the feet. This is the only metric where the category has real information.
• Ease of use (25%) — whether the fittings and instructions are in the box, and how much glue and drilling the assembly asks of someone doing it for the first time.
• Build (20%) — steel, molded plastic, or a wood-grain finish over an unnamed board. A mount hangs on a wall for twenty years, and “wood grain finish” is not a material.
• Carry and weight (15%) — for a wall item this reads as whether you can plan an installation from the spec sheet. Published dimensions and a published weight tell you what anchor to use; nothing published means a trip back to the hardware store.
• Warranty (10%) — nobody in this category publishes one, so everything scores 2 here and the metric separates nothing. It is still shown, because pretending the category has warranties would be worse.

We also checked that each mount is currently purchasable, on 2026-10-26. Three of the four returned a live, in-stock Amazon listing. The Mountain Mike's Beard Collector did not, and is sold through Sportsman's Warehouse instead — its buy link is a search rather than a listing, which is also why no live price shows on its card.

What a fan mount actually does

A turkey fan mount is a bracket or a plaque that holds the tail fan open in a spread, usually with the beard underneath and sometimes the spurs or the feet. That is the whole product. The reason it matters more than its price suggests is that a fan does not keep its own shape: pull one off a bird and it closes like a hand, and once it dries closed you cannot reopen it without breaking quills.

So the mount is doing two separate jobs, and most people only think about one of them. It displays the fan on a wall. It also, in the days right after the hunt, holds the fan at the spread it will keep forever. Buy the mount before the season, not after the bird, because the first week is when it does the work that cannot be redone.

If this is your first spring, the rest of the kit list comes first — the turkey hunting gear list and the beginner gear roundup are the pages to read before this one. A mount is the purchase you make in hope.

Bracket, plaque or collector

Three designs are sold, and they suit three different hunters.

The bracket. A metal arm with a clamp or tabs, mounted to the wall, with the fan held at an adjustable angle. Nothing is glued, nothing is screwed through the feathers, and the angle can be changed later. The Skull Hooker is the bracket in this group, and it is also the only one that will stand on a shelf instead of hanging on a wall.

The plaque. A flat panel — molded plastic or finished board — with the fan fixed to the face and a position for the beard below it. This is the traditional look, it is cheaper, and the fan is usually glued. The Illusion and H.S. Strut kits are plaques.

The collector. A plaque designed to fill up over several seasons, with multiple beard slots. The Mountain Mike's Beard Collector takes five. It is the right buy for a hunter who expects to take a bird most springs and the wrong one for a hunter displaying a first bird, because four empty slots look like four empty slots.

The four mounts, side by side

Read the gaps in this table as the finding, not as missing work. Two of these four publish no material, no dimensions and no weight anywhere a buyer can read them.

The ranking follows from that. The Skull Hooker is the only mount whose material and construction are both published and whose design needs no adhesive; the Illusion kit is the only one you could plan a wall around, because it is the only one with dimensions and a weight; the two plaques with nothing published score where their documentation puts them, with the H.S. Strut kit pulled up by including hardware, instructions and a nameplate in the box.

Drying a fan before it goes on anything

No mount will save a badly dried fan, and this is where first-timers lose the trophy. The process is simple and almost entirely about patience.

1. Cut the fan off with the base attached. The quills anchor into a wedge of flesh and bone at the base of the tail. Keep it. Cut around it rather than trying to pull individual feathers, which is how a fan ends up with gaps.
2. Scrape the base clean. Trim the meat and fat off the back of the wedge without cutting into where the quills sit. Fat left in the base is what makes a mount smell in July.
3. Spread the fan and pin it. On cardboard, at the spread you want, held with pins or tacks through the base — never through the vanes of the feathers.
4. Dry it with borax. Pack the cleaned base in borax, which is the standard home-taxidermy drying agent, and leave it somewhere dry and out of the sun. Two to four weeks, not two to four days. Re-apply if the base is still damp.
5. Only then mount it. A fan that goes onto a plaque wet will shrink, loosen and drop feathers.

The beard, the spurs and the feet

The beard is the bundle of modified feathers from the chest. It is cut off with a patch of skin behind it, scraped, dried in borax the same way as the fan, and then glued into whatever slot the mount provides. Three of the four mounts here take a beard; the Beard Collector takes five.

Spurs and feet are optional and they divide people. Two of these kits take them, and a dried foot is a genuine part of the record — spur length is one of the things hunters actually measure about a gobbler, along with beard length and weight. If you plan to keep them, cut the legs off at the joint and dry them with the same borax treatment, straightened in the position you want.

One honest note: a jake and a mature gobbler produce very different-looking mounts, because a jake's fan has longer center feathers that break the even arc of a tom's and the beard is barely a stub. That is not a reason not to mount a first jake. It is a reason to know what you shot — jake vs tom vs hen covers the differences you will see with the bird in your hands.

Keeping the parts is a state question

Mounting a fan assumes you may keep it, and in most states you may — but the rules about what has to stay attached to the carcass, and for how long, are set state by state and some of them bear directly on when you can start cutting.

Minnesota is the clearest example on this site: the DNR states that “the feathers, head, and feet must remain on the wild turkey until it is registered,” and registration is within 24 hours. Start cleaning the bird in the field there and you have broken a rule before you ever reach for the borax. The state-by-state detail is in turkey hunting in Minnesota, turkey hunting in Texas and turkey hunting in California.

There is also a use for a dried fan beyond the wall, and it comes with its own legality problem: fanning and reaping. Several states restrict or ban it outright, and it carries a safety case of its own. We cover both in best reaping decoys. A fan on a plaque and a fan in your hand in the woods are two different decisions.

Four ways people ruin a mount

1. Mounting a wet fan. The single most common mistake. It shrinks, the glue line opens, and feathers start dropping out of the base within a year.
2. Pinning through the feathers. Every pin and every screw goes through the base wedge, never through a vane. A hole in a vane widens, and the feather eventually splits along it.
3. Leaving fat in the base. It will smell, and it will attract insects. Scrape more than you think you need to, then borax it.
4. Hanging it in sunlight. A fan in a sunny room fades measurably in a few summers. The dark barring goes first, which is exactly the part that makes a fan look like a fan.

Buying one as a gift

A fan mount is an unusually good gift for a turkey hunter, for a reason that has nothing to do with the mount: it is the one piece of turkey gear that assumes success, and it costs less than a box of shells. Give it in December and it is waiting on the bench when the season opens.

Two cautions. Do not buy the five-slot collector for someone who has never killed a turkey — it is a statement about their next five seasons that they did not make. And if you do not know whether they already own one, the H.S. Strut kit with the brass nameplate is the safe version, because a second plaque is useful and a second bracket is not.

The rest of the gift lane is in best gifts for turkey hunters, unique gifts for turkey hunters and Christmas gifts for turkey hunters.

What to actually buy

If this is your first bird and you want it to look right: the Illusion Beard Master. It is the only kit here with published dimensions and a weight, which means you can hang it before the fan is even dry, it takes the fan on its own without looking unfinished, and the camo face hides a glue line better than a plain plaque. Half a pound goes on a drywall anchor.

If you want the fan reversible: the Skull Hooker Turkey Hooker. Steel, adjustable for angle and tilt, three tabs underneath for the beard and legs, and nothing permanent done to the fan. It costs more than the plaques and it looks modern rather than traditional, which is the trade. It will also stand on a shelf, which matters if you are renting.

If you expect a bird most springs: the Mountain Mike's Beard Collector. Five beard slots plus the spurs or feet is the most capacity in the group, and one plaque that fills over a decade beats six plaques in a box. Be clear-eyed about the first few years looking sparse, and note that it is the one mount here with no Amazon listing — it is sold through sporting goods retailers.

If you want the cheapest honest option, or a gift: the H.S. Strut Turkey Tail & Beard Mounting Kit. Hardware, instructions and a brass nameplate in the box for about the price of a box of shells. A date and a place engraved under a fan is most of the reason anyone mounts one, and this is the only kit here that lets you do it.