how many of you hunt to support your fly fishing / tying habits? also how do you cure the hide or feathers?
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how many of you hunt to support your fly fishing / tying habits? also how do you cure the hide or feathers?
Funny you should ask. My son just called to inform me he had shot his deer and was going to bring me the hide tomorrow. I have enough deer hide now to last to the middle of the century. It only takes an hour or so to take care of a whole hide so I will just work it into my busy schedule. You retired folks know how that works, don't know how I had time to work when I was working.
Deer is easy to take care of.
Throw the hide into a garbage cah with enough warm water to cover, a half cup of Dawn dish washing detergant and a handfull of borax. Let soak while you drink a fresh cup of coffiie. Then wash well and rinse.
Scrape the hide making sure that ALL the fat and muscle tissue is removed. I have a fleshing board and I scrape with a hand axe.
Put fresh water, detergant and borax in the garbage can and wash the hide again.
Rinse well with clear water. Sling as much water as you can out of the hide. Lay out over some bushes in the shade and let the hide start to air dry. When the hair is almost dry streatch the hide on a frame that allows air to circulate around it until it is dry.
When dry, cut into usable pieces and store untill needed with some moth balls containing paradichlorobenzine as an active ingreadiant.
Don't bother with salt, It will only make a mess. If the weather is on the warm side a little borax will keep the flies at bay.
That is it for animal hides.
Bird skins get the same treatment except they are always sprinkeled with borax. No salt here either.
Have fun,
fishbum
I fish and tie flies and jigs when there's not something to hunt! ;)
Got a bunch of CDC, mallard flank, gadwall flank, and widgeon flank, as well as some bronze mallard feathers this past weekend. Headed out tomorrow after work for another weekend of duck hunting... from the report I just got, I should have a ton of mallard feathers shortly.
When I can I do, also it gives me something to trade which this year is ZIP!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No hunting allowed due to my hip injury. Zac I ain't got much in way of trading materials but you get a bunch of mallards we're gonna have to talk about some Lemon Flank feathers LOL
Fatman
unfortunately i have to work to support my fly tying habit. if i hunted i'd be bankrupt :D
Fatman, the lemon flank comes from wood ducks... it and the bronze mallard are my two favorite tying materials! If I get into a few woodies, we will talk.
Zac
Jeremy: About the feathers. I think that feathers from birds other than waterfowl can be preserved by ensuring all the meat is removed from the skin and the skin the cured with either salt or borax. However for waterfowl I find is is much much much easier to simply pluck off the feathers you wish to save, ensure they are dry and store is a bug proof place until use. Waterfowl skin has too much fat in it to make curing the skin an easy task for me.
Tim
Panman: That's what the Borax does... it removes the oils and takes care of the hide by killing the bugs that are present and any that want to get on it and destroy it while you are treating it. Borax is the miracle tanning solution created by man other than urine. Urine was used for hundreds of years by natives in Alaska and North America partially because of the salts ... then after that they would scrub with the animals brains. Isn't Borax wonderful? ;)
I have tried borax on ducks and will stick to plucking.
Tim
Now that you mentioned it Borax is the bomb.Quote:
Originally Posted by mahanvey
Jeremy,
I never hunted before; not ducks and deer anyhow. But I do plan on it for the reason you stated and my wife’s uncle was a hunter and he would make the best pheasant stew quail breasts and duck I have ever had and now have the recipes.
Just thinking about them makes me hungry.
I hunt alot and keep squirrel tails and feathers, bucktails, etc..., But I try to keep things simple feathers i'll pluck or cape out a bird or sections of feathers i want. I'll usually salt them and dry them out and they keep fine in plastic bags, helps to put mothballs in there as well. Tails i usually remove as much flesh as i can and salt the end and let it dry, with squirrels or with any animal i suppose you have to watch out for parasites, so i'll either leave them out int he cold over night or the freezer. Bucktails we'll skin out and salt and dry, alot of guys up here just let it dry no salt or other treatment.
I have A.K. Best's book "dying and bleaching natural fly-tying materials." it is a great book and I have used borax on squirrels and one deer hide. I have only plucked feathers off of birds though. I was curious to see how many of the members used self obtained furs and feathers for tying and how they prepared them for use and storage. Just curious to see how others did it and see if anyone had any good tricks
I like to use salt on deer skin, as I find it brings out the oils and fats. Scrape that off and add some borax and it's good to go. I only use small pieces of hide. I have never done a complete hide. Deer tail ?? What Derik said - works great. I have some that are more than 5 years old. My son and I just got back a couple of weeks ago from a Northern Ontario grouse hunting trip. 48 birds harvested. 14 skins kept. We skinned them with the wings on. The ones that were left in the front of the truck in the sun cured the best. That's all that is needed. Even the wings will dry with no problem.
Very true we usually keep our mallard and wood duck wings and tack them to a piece of cardboard and just salt the ends where we cut them off if we didn't do a full skin. But a trick I picked up with a skin in college is to stretch it out over a piece of cardboard and salt it, then i'd stick it between the window screen and the window and just shut the window. The sun always shined good and would help dry the skins within a few days, just have to watch the weather and bring it in when it rains. Sure some people walking by would see those grouse skins and they were probably disgusted but the soft hackles tied from those feathers looked great. Yeah buck tails are deer tails, that's just what we've always called them whether they came from a buck or a doe.
Do not ever use salt on tying materials... The tiny bit of salt that may be left on materials can be enough to turn an entire fly box rusty red. DO not ask me how I know...
I am goofy enough about it to fly from AK to AZ just to hunt mearns quail for fly tying feathers. And will likely do it again this winter. The little birds are great sport, wonderful eating and the skins get used a lot.
I much prefer to keep entire skins as much of the presentation tying I do requires perfectly matched feathers and there is no better filing system than the skin. I have hundreds, no thousands, of little zip-locks with perfectly matching feathers... And they never get dug through. I always go straight to the skin as it is obvious and has it all...
I tied a batch of soft hackles a while back and used 26 different grouse, quail, partridges, or pheasant species to show the differences between them. There was everything from mearns to bobwhite, 3 ptarmigan flavors (willow ptarmigan is the same bird as the red grouse of Scotland) to sharptail, ruffed to spruce, and then pheasants and huns... Almost all are full skins. Hens have better soft hackles than roosters in many cases.
A couple tricks to make skins better... Do not hesitate to wash the skins in warm soapy water. RInse as much blood out as possible under cold first, but then wash them good. Do not be afraid to squeeze them good to get rid of the water. Then drop them in a bucket about half-full of sawdust with a bunch of borax added. Put the lid on the bucket and roll it around for a while. The sawdust and borax will polish and straighten all those fibers and the bird will come out looking gorgeous. Pin the skin out on a piece of cardboard to dry.
If ducks are on the menu the fat can be easily soaked out with coleman fuel or white gas. Then wash in warm soapy water as before. The fat may need to be scored with a sharp knife to liberate it.
I leave the feet and bills on skins in part to make ID automatic and in part because I like the look of them. Just skin out to the base of the bill and cut off with heavy scissors.
Leave the wingbones in but peel the skin back as far as possible to access as much flesh as possible. Refill with borax after tumbling to get as much bug preventative as possible in there. Pin them out to dry on cardboard.
art
Wish someone would come and trap the beavers in our wetlands. Massachusetts has terribly restricted laws about it, unfortunately. They rival groundhogs as my least favorite animals... but the hides offer great tying fur!
Peter F.
I don't hunt TO SUPPLY my habit, but my habit does get supplied by the hunting. I hunt to provide something different on the table, and to remain closer to the food chain.
That said, the Wood Ducks have started coming in...only have flank from 2 so far this year, but it is early. CDC is nice as well.
thanks to all that replied. it is great to receive feedback from those who are not "published." lots of great food for thought here on preparing different skins for tying. I enjoy hunting but it seems that I am always contemplating how to use what I am after for fly tying and since the closest fly shop is over an hour away from me right now, procuring my own materials is very convenient.
Jeremy,
I will echo haps warning about salt. I was given some green drake flies that had tails on them tied from groundhog tail fibers that had been cured with salt. Every one of the hooks broke where the tailing was tied in. Salt is very corrosive stuff if not throughly removed. I cured a few grouse fan- tails with salt. The salt did a number on the brads I used to spread out the tails into a fan configuration. Also don't leave curing materials where mice can get at them! The grouse fans were turned into a pile of loose feathers. The mice chewed off all the fat and connective tissue between each feather. On a positive note, the mice did not chew up the feathers, so I have some nice clean individual grouse tail feathers! LOL!!! My bird dogs and I are currently in the process of collecting some pheasant tails/rump feathers along with the odd woodcock and grouse. The butcher gets the hide and tails from my deer. I have a whole tanned deer hide that I just got at a garage sale, so I don't have to mess with one myself. I did shoot a buck about 6yrs ago that had a very dark hide (almost black) that I am still kicking myself for not keeping and getting tanned. Oh well, water under the bridge I guess!
Best Regards, Dave S.
thanks to one and all. i accepted the gift of 9 pheasant skins from a pal at church. they'd enjoyed the eating part after skinning them. i decided to cut out the bits i really wanted--tails and those lovely greeny-bluey saddles--and just treat those. i'll let you know how it all turns out.
http://s209.photobucket.com/albums/b...asant%20skins/
Casey
Nice mess of feathers!!!!!!!!!!! Do the eyes deceive or was there a hen skin in that batch???? Enjoy and make sure to protect all those feathers
Fatman
Fatman,
Checked out the photo your referring to, and yes that is a hen pheasant. We have many game lands here in Penna. that are open to cocks and hens. These are stocked birds of course.
Best regards, Dave S.
yes, that was a hen pheasant skin. these birds were shot at a private ranch. my pal compared it to fishing for stocked rainbows. we agreed that sometimes it's harder than you might think to shoot or catch these planted critters. and hey! it was the only game in town...;-)
Casey
Very good looking bunch of bird skins! Do not forget those long feathers that hang in right with the showy ones, coming off the inside at the base (Filoplumes) as they make terrific leeches and other wets... I keep a small box by my vise and drop them in as I use the outer feathers so I do not waste them.
Lots of borax is all you need.
art
That's quite a haul you got! Pheasant is such a useful skin isn't it? One of my favorite feathers on the bird are the secondary tail feathers found under the long ones. They make great mottled wing cases on nymphs. Hope you didn't throw them away.
Can't wait for you to show us some of your pheasant ties from the vise. I'll be watchin'.