Here’s how to have a beautiful, real mounted insect collection without killing a thing
or buying expensive spreading equipment:

First, if you're looking for museum-quality specimens, you'll need to lower your standards a little.
Understand that these are going to be insects that have died of natural causes, failed predation attempts,
or human/vehicle accidents. They have lived lives out in the wild and they will probably have some damage
that reflects that. They aren’t going to be pristine specimens that were raised on a farm for the
purposes of killing, mounting and selling. For example, a butterfly may have some missing wing scales,
a torn wing, or be completely missing its head from a bird attack. You will need to decide what level
of damage is acceptable to you for your own collection. Once in a while, you’ll get lucky and find one
that is still in extremely good shape, but in my experiences, it’s extremely rare to find an absolutely
flawless specimen. If you’re still interested, read on!

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How to find them:

This is the hardest part as it involves quite a bit of searching, a keen eye, and willingness to do
some work. I suggest carrying some containers and tweezers with you unless you are home for transport.
The containers 3m electrical tape comes in work great, as does any small box from a component, a new
cell phone, or a piece of jewelry. Tweezers can work great for picking up insects and doing less damage
while doing so than your fingers in most cases. They can be inexpensive standard eyebrow tweezers.

• Cars:

  If you have a car, this is a great place to start. Unfortunately, many people who drive
  have had the experience of driving along and seeing a big splat on their windshield. Nothing can be done
  in this instance, however, some insects get hit by cars while remaining mostly intact. If you have a true
  grille on your car, just behind that you may find insects stuck to the radiator. You may also find them in
  other places under the hood. I theorize that they got there by finding a place to hide or shelter while the car
  was parked and passed away, perhaps they rested on the engine and got too hot, or maybe they decided to taste a
  bit of some vehicle fluid. In any case, I’d suggest starting here. You may also find them in the tiny spaces
  between doors and latches, in truck beds, trunks, and wheel wells. If you know any mechanics/techs, ask them to
  keep an eye out and save what they find for you.

• Roads:

  The mounted butterfly you clicked on to get to this page is a Spicebush swallowtail
  I saw in the middle of the road one year while we were in the middle of an extreme heat spell and drought. It’s
  one of my more perfect specimens, and is shown below left in non-gif form. The Monarch below was found on a road
  shoulder by a friend who was keeping an eye out for bugs for me. It had likely been hit by a car or bicycle and
  has a lot of abdominal damage, but a level of which is acceptable to me.

Left: Spicebush Swallowtail, Papilio trolius Right: Male Monarch, Danaus plexippus

• Businesses:

  The perimeter of businesses is another great place to look. Though most businesses
  no longer use mercury or sodium vapor bulbs (old large bulbs that seriously disrupted the lives of
  insects) to light their parking lots and green spaces at night, a great many insects are still disrupted by LED
  lights. Check near the bases of these lights and under any nearby trees. Below is an Imperial Moth, Eacles
  imperialis, that I found under a pine tree near a large light behind my local Walmart. The horrible color fading is due to
  artificial lighting because I did not store it properly (This will be discussed in the preservation section).

• Spider webs:

  First, I’d like to make it clear that I do not endorse the taking of food from
  spiders. That said, some species of spiders leave corpses in their webs long after they’ve eaten what they can,
  some abandon webs to find a new place for food, and some leave when they deem an area to no longer be safe for
  them. Make sure the spider cannot be found near the web or that the insect is long before drained of its fluids
  before taking it from a web (some hide nearby). You can usually tell if the latter is the case by a hole somewhere
  on the insect, which will have gotten larger as the insect dried out. These are going to be a little harder to
  rehydrate and dry again due to there already being a hole in them from the spider's fangs. It’s also really tricky
  and delicate work to remove webbing without doing too much damage to the insect, but it can totally be done with
  the right tools and a lot of patience. I will go over tools in the next section.

• The woods and grasslands:

  Keep your eyes scanning the environment when you take nature walks, paying
  particular attention to tree trunks, the base of trees, and the ground. It might seem weird and unnatural at first
  to stare at the ground as you walk along, and you might run into a branch (I’ve taken a branch to the eye doing
  this, haha) but you might also be rewarded with an insect find. Just remember to look up often. Check under shrubs
  in grassland environments particularly where wildflowers are present.

Left: Red-Spotted Purple, Limenitis arthemis Right: Snowberry Clearwing, Hemaris diffinis

• Antique Shops:

  Occasionally at antique shops you can find insect specimens that have been mounted already. I've come across this
  4 times and have purchased 2. In this way, you aren't giving money to farms or unscrupulous people and financially
  encouraging the practice of UNethical insect collecting, you are only giving money to the shop and the booth renter.
  Most people who rent booths at antique stores just sell their finds, usually acquired by frequenting yard and estate
  sales and/or buying storage units. If, however, you notice that a particular booth has more than a couple and the
  mounts look fairly new, I would suggest staying away. Below is one of my finds, purchased approx. 2010. I would
  guess that this type of display with the faux flower and preserved greenery is early 1990s and prior.

Whether something is ethical or not is subjective, and if you find this way of aquiring insects crosses your personal
line, that's totally fair.

Don't forget to ask any friends and/or family members to keep an eye out for you as well.

Next: Tools