Tusk and Hide Hunt Company
The Tusk and Hide Company provides guided hunts for trophy specimens of rare and dangerous prey animals of the Tobrick Mountains region. The specialize in Mastodon, Smilodon, Short-faced Bear, and Wyvern hunts, but will provide paying guests with as exotic and thrilling a hunt as can be arranged for the right amount of gold. The Company is owned by Willa Stitcher and is located just outside the walls of the Town of Tobrick in teh Duchy of Hekmo.
The Tusk and Hide Company provides guides, equipment and facilities to stalk, hunt, butcher and transport trophy prey for a premium fee. A single mastodon hunt in the late fall for a large bull will take nearly a month to complete and will cost the customer at least 1,200 guilders ($150,000), sometimes significantly more. This means that Willa is a very wealthy woman and can provide an excellent wage to her more than two dozen employees.
The process that the Company uses is to lead the patron into the wilderness where herds or individual animals are known to be, set up a comfortable camp to accommodate the patron in comfort, allow the patron the first (if not the killing) shot at the prey, then finish off the beast, butcher it, pack it back to the lodge where it can be packed for shipment to wherever the patron wants it sent. In the case of a large mastodon bull, that means as much as 6,000 lbs of meat, 1,000 lbs of ivory, 2,500 lbs of hide and 1,500 lbs of very valuable lard (mastodon fat is shelf-stable and can last for a decade once rendered down). That means the patron is taking 10 to 12 large wagons of processed harvest with him when he leaves the lodge.
Every hunt is conducted with a master hunter/guide, as many as 10 lackeys (qualified hunters in their own right but answering to the master) and another dozen servants and footmen to attend the patron at all times. The master hunter and lackeys wear distinctively non-martial apparel and only carry the equipment necessary to successfully complete a hunt. Padded leather jerkins, thick leather vambraces and greaves, and specialized leather helmets protect the men from claws and teeth without detracting from the heroic figure of the brave patron.
Purpose / Function
To provide guided trophy hunts of large and dangerous prey to wealthy hunters, experienced or otherwise. The owner, Willa Stitcher, has visions of similar operations in other parts of the Kingdoms, where professional companies of hunters and adventurers conduct forays into wild and dangerous places for profit and gain, if not glory and fame. She has seen the benefit of the Tusk and Hide's success in the immediate area of the Tobrick Mountains as the number of smilodon and bear attacks and encounters has markedly dropped over the last five years.
The owner of the Tusk and Hide Company, Willa Stitcher
A frequent patron of the Tusk and Hide, Lord Martin Standam of Arksloth
A rare view of the professional lackeys delivering the killing blow on a large bull mastodon
