I got a phone call tonight asking me to look at this thread. 1st off, great bear, congrats. 2nd hold the horses on your plans. You want the skull either bugged or macerated.
Definitely don't boil it. I did more euro's last year than most will see in a lifetime. Boiling ruins more skulls than you can count. At best you do it right and you end up with a forever yellow skull that you'll never get the grease out of. The heat sets in stains and short of a can of spray paint it will never be white.
You also run the risk, the really good risk, of it just falling apart in the pan. If you use sal-soda or similar to help with the tissue and aren't mindful of the heat, constantly, you'll end up with bone chips.
Boiling and bleach is the best way to end up with a pile of white powder that I know of.
So what I'm saying, don't boil it.
Power washing also has a habit of blowing a skull into pieces. Bad enough when it's your 5th deer of the season, probably a nightmare in your situation.
If you want to do it yourself send me a PM, I'll send you an instruction book on how to finish once the flesh is gone. You can go 100% on your own and get good safe results, you can have someone just bug it and get good safe results, or you can have someone do the full job.
Lastly you need to slow down and expect a whole lot of patience required from this point on. Bear are greasy animals, it can take months to fully degrease so you'll have a nice and permanently white trophy. Deer can take a couple weeks, or a couple months. Each skull is different and trying to speed things up just leads to a bad trophy.
Bears and pigs are much worse on the amount time they'll require to be fully done. But if you're patient you'll be very happy.
No reason not to wait until all the measuring is done before you deal with the skull if that's allowable by B&C.
Misc. skull pics
http://s133.photobucket.com/albums/q45/NdIndy/Skull%20Works/unused/
http://s133.photobucket.com/albums/q45/NdIndy/Skull%20Works/
Actually, anyone can PM me their email address and I'll send the instructions out. I wrote it myself, so it's the best
I'm only doing bugs this year, all my equipment is broken down for a remodel, so it's bugs and instructions for everyone. But I'm only charging $25-$35 so I don't feel too bad