Processing your own materials?

[dickey]

How many of you process your own material for your fly tying needs?

[Gandolf]

Hi Dickey,

I have processed some from several different deer hides and elk hides, and also have done squirrel skins, a number of buck tails, and quite a few various and sundry game bird skins, as well as starling skins, etc.

Usually I wash and clean them well if need be, and then if feeling diligent (usually the case) will borax treat them during the drying process.

In short I have processed some of what is available through hunting.

Regards,

Gandolf

[dickey]

I got some birds, pheasants, chucker, woodduck from some hunting friends and am trying to process them myself. I am affraid of messing them up, what is the best way to skin them out?

[roygpa]

Pheasants, turkey, a couple of squirrels, 5 cottontail rabbits, 2 raccoons, a big chunk of deer hide, and a stinky old possum that smelled like a skunk. I decided last winter to learn how to tan hides even though it isn't necessary in order to preserve them well enough for tying. I used chemicals called safety acid and Lutan F along with plenty of salt. For the birds I just salt them until they dry out.

One of my buddies just kill a moose and he says he's going to give me part of the cape.

Roy

[rainbowchaser]

Dickey , at the risk of sounding sarcastic .... slowly and carefully. We watched a video of Denny Conrad skinning a rooster at the Michigan fish-in a couple of years ago. I was looking foreward to learning how to skin a bird in less than the hour or more it always takes me but it appeared that patience and a sharp knife are needed.

[Gandolf]

Hi Dickey,

Upland game birds I generally skin. This is done by making a cut down the brest from the base of the bill down to the vent. Slowly and carefully peel the hide back either using a knife, or Ronn Lucas slowly works his hands between the skin and body. Usually I make cuts up the legs so the hide can be peeled free of the legs more easily.

If you choose to use a knife, pull on the hide to stretch it away from the body, and carefully cut the fiberous material that holds the skin to the body. Very slow and easy is the key here. A very sharp knife with a round (instead of sharply pointed) tip is a big plus.

Either way, I generally trim off the wings and try (this part is not easy, and I usually do not do it well) cut the wing skin free from the meat and bone.

Once you have the skin off, treat the skin side with borax (20 mule team borax laundry product from the laundry section of the grocery store is fairly pure borax, and works extremely well). To do this lay the skin with the skin side up and add a layer of borax maybe 1/8th inch thick. Then lay the skin on a piece of corrogated carboard, or something similar, to dry. If it gets too mealy, just throw the borax away, and treat with fresh borax. The borax will draw out the oils in the fat and the moisture, and also make it bug proof.

If the feathers are oily and nasty, I soak it for a while in warm water with a bit of dish washing soap in it. You can use your hands to help wash the soap into the feathers, but go very easy, as the hide and feathers are easily damaged. Rinse the skin and feathers well with clean warm water, let dry till just barely damp, and then retreat with borax. Lay the skin feather side down before the borax treatment and leave it feather side down to dry. Replace the borax as is necessary, as the borax will help draw out the water and oils from the skin.

An animal is skinned somewhat the same way. Again, split down the belly, being careful to avoid cutting into the belly, and legs. Dad was a trapper as a kid, and he always used wire wrapped around each hind leg at the paw, and hung up the animal by the wire. If you are from a rural area, wire about the diameter of wire for hay bales works well, if from the city wire from the lumber yard that is used for tying concrete rebar is about right. This gives you better access to use the knife to cut off the hide. Again you put a pull on the hide and carefully cut the membrane that attaches the hide to the body. By stretching the hide the membrane is easier to cut. It is also very tough on a knife edge, so you may have to resharpen. An extremely sharp knife blade with a rounded point rather than a sharply pointed point, makes life MUCH easier.

An animal skin is very tough compared to a bird skin, so at this point I use soap and water and wash the hide well. Next I lay the hide down, hair side down, and trim off as much of the fat (if present) as is possible.

Next, you want to get it to the point of being just damp dry before borax treating it. If the hide is not nasty, I often skip the washing step, as drying a wet hide complicates life a great deal. You are better off not to get it wet if you don't have to. But if it needs to be washed, since the hide is fairly tough, you can swing it around and around to sling as much water out as possible. Next, put it is an warm dry area, preferrably with a good breeze on it and let it dry for a couple of hours until just slightly damp if it can dry quickly enough that way. Turn it from time to time as it drys. I used to put it small skins in the bed of my pickup on dry cold windy days. We have very dry air out here in west Texas, and it would dry out pretty quickly. I used to hang deer, elk, or moose hide on my fense, skin side out. You can not let it set this way for very long, if it is warm, as it will spoil. If the weather is very cold it will take a long time to spoil. While the skin is still damp it is time to treat it with borax.

Finally let the skin dry very well with the borax. This can be done by stretching it hair side down on a piece of scrap plywood and using small nails to nail the edges to the wood. You want to stretch it nicely taught. Treat the skin with borax right after nailing it to the wood. Let it dry. Again if the borax gets mealy with moisture or fat from the hide, throw the borax away and replace with fresh borax. Again, if you do not have to wash the hide and hair you are much better off, and you risk much less when you dry it. Again, out here in our dry west Texas climate even deer will dry nicely hung up on the fense on a cold night, at least dry enough to go to the borax step.

On some birds like waterfowl that have very oily/fatty skin, I pluck the bird and place feathers that are similar size and color in separate zip lock bags. I also do this on larger upland game birds such as pheasants. For example to do this on a pheasant I leave the bird unskinned and pluck carefully. Thus greenish neck feathers go in one bag, white neck band feathers go in the next bag, golden breast feathers go in the next bag, and so forth.

Flight feathers from ducks are used for winging Catskill drys, some flight feathers of upland game birds can be used for wingcases on certain types of nymphs, etc. Lots of good uses for all types of feathers.

Hope you do well with the skinning and treating of the skins and feathers.

Regards,

Gandolf

[Bass_Bug]

I've only skinned and dried one bird and it was pheasant, road kill at that! Turns out, pretty much exactly like Gandolf describes. Being a first a took a lot of pictures and added to my blog. Nothing difficult, and the only thing that could have made skinning it easier was to have help. Of course holding a sharp knife next to someone else fingers, or someone else holding a sharp knife next to YOUR fingers requires a lot of trust!

http://www.flyanglersonline.com/bb/blog.php?b=212

[Gandolf]

Hi Dickey,

In reading my post above, I realized some more explantion would be useful.

I only wash a skin if it is necessary. For example, a friend gave me as much of an elk hide that I wanted. I wanted the rump fur most, but because of the skinning job that they had done, the area I wanted was bloody, dirty, and had oil from the fat on it.

I had to wash the heck out of it after I skinned it to remove the fat from the skin side. The more fat you can get off the better, try to get every last scrap of it. Lots of soap and water in the wash step. In this case I used cool water first, to get as much of the blood off as possible, and let it soak a spell. After the cool water and soap, I used really warm water and soap to get out dirt and oil. Finally rinse a few times with warm water to get the soap out.

Once that was done, I hung the peices of hide (I had four or five or so, one up to 1 foot by 2 foot) on my fense with the hair side out. Most of the water dripped out of the hide and a good breeze helps the hair dry. My back yard is not visible to the neighbors, so they could not see the hide hanging on it. I worked on the skinning and washing to about midnight, so after hanging, it was out there all night.

Be careful to keep things where dogs can not get to them. Dogs will gladly drag off hide from animals and birds. Usually they wait until after you have a lot of time invested in the trimming off of all of the fat and washing steps.

You want it hair side out on the fense so that the hair will dry as much as possible. Deer, elk, etc. usually are shot in December, so it is pretty cold here, and the hide does not spoil overnight.

With a wet hide, the concern is the damp hair side being down, and preventing the hide side from drying well, even with the borax treatment. Thats why when you see the pictures of indian camps from the past century that the hides were on frames, so the air could get to both sides.

If you can make a frame of lumber and stretch the hide from the frame, if you have washed it, you are much better off. Stretch it flat, but suspended so that it is off the ground so that air can get to both sides, and borax treat the skin side, which you should have facing up.

With small skins such as squirrel or woodchuck, this should not be a big problem. With deer or elk, you are better off to dry small pieces of hide, such as a foot by a foot or smaller. A square foot of deer, elk, or moose will tie a VERY large number of flies, so you don't need to do the whole hide, unless you are a commercial tier, sell hide, or have some other really good reason for wanting a lot of hide.

I usually keep pieces of hide from different locations on the skin. The hair down the middle of the back of a whitetail is the best for winging flies such as the elk hair caddis types. The hair down low on the side is better for spinning. The tail is great for winging flies such as Wulffs and for tailing Wulffs. Belly hair is good for dying for spinning.

To dry bird skins that I have washed, you can either again, dry them outside on a dry cool breezy day, or if that isn't an option use some plastic screening on a wooden frame. Lay the skin on the screen with the feather side down and when it is dry to the point that the skin side is just damp, treat the skin side with borax. If you let it dry completely the borax will not seep into the skin to treat it for bug proofness. Suspend the screen while drying the skin, again so air can get to both sides.

The big danger in warm humid climates is spoilage, but out here in dry cool west Texas, spoilage usually is not a problem.

The time you spend on the borax treatment is time well spent. When completely dry and borax treated, I think the hair on hide will keep longer than any of us will be around to tie flies. The borax completely bug proofs it.

I am hoping that this addition will clear up some questions.

Regards,

Gandolf

[Gandolf]

Hi (Again) Dickey,

Sorry! I misread your original post, and read "woodduck" as "woodchuck", thus the bit about treating animal skins.

As in my first post, I pluck ducks, geese, and cranes, as the skins are extremely fatty. They have a lot of fat in the hide, and also have a layer of fat just under the skin. This makes it very difficult to preserve the hide. They are prone to spoil, and the fat in the skin wants to slowly melt out over a period of time and make the feathers an oily mess.

I again pluck similar feathers from the hide into different zip locks. I also do this for pheasants, because a pheasant skin is large enough that it is difficult for me to store a whole intact skin. It is much easier to store the feathers in zip locks than to try to save the skin whole.

I think from a ringneck pheasant I get a little over a dozen different bags of feathers types. I use a sharpie marker to label the bags, and all of the ziplocks from one type of bird then go into the next size bigger zip lock and this bigger bag is then labelled.

I would definately pluck and zip locks the ducks. You will find life much simpler than trying to perserve the whole skin.

Regards,

Gandolf

[dickey]

Well with all the help and information I will try to skin these birds. I will start with one of the chukars (practice) before I try the pheasants. Wish me luck, I really do not want to mess up these skins. Thanks for all the help and information I will let you guys know how I do.