OH DUCK... feathers Help?!?

[Luke McLeod]

I was fortunate enough to recieve 3 full ducks, one each male and female Mallard and a female Woody from a friend and I have a couple of questions. How should I try to preserve them? Full skins or pluck them?

[gmac209]

Smoked - duck can be delicious.

[Panman]

I prefer plucking them. There is a lot of oil in the skin that makes the full skin too much work for me.

Tim

[James Smith]

I'm with Panman on this one. Pluck the feathers, sorting them by the type of feather, wash them in gentle detergent n warm water to remove grease, blood etc and spread them on paper towels to dry. Once they are fully dried, put them in zip lock bags that are properly labeled as to the species of duck and type of feather.

Jim Smith

[Allan]

Pluck the barred flank and 'bronze' flank off of the male mallard. Generally the females are just good for the wings. Take the right and left wings, match and then pluck or cut each flight and secondary feather(1st left with 1st right and so on) and scotch tape each pair at the bottom of the quill. This way you'll always have matched pairs. You might want to keep the entire wing because the small feathers off of the underside are good for soft hackles. Also, you might want to save a breast which have feathers for 'fan wings'. Just make sure you skin it really good and wash/dry it thoroughly before placing into a zip lock bag.
Important - Isolate all of this stuff until you are sure there are no bugs!

Allan

[gerri]

Some where from someone, I understood another procedure was that one could skin the birds as well as possible, scrape away as much fat as possible, sprinkle generous amounts of BORAX (from the laundry section of the grocery store, and place in double brown paper bag for a couple of months. Remove, wash in Dawn dish soap ,let dry and repeat borax process with clean borax and clean bags. sure would save a lot of feather plucking and keep the feathers on the skin like the Indian soft hackle and pheasant skins we purchase.

[Mark Vendon]

I would just pluck them too. At least 7 or 8 years ago, I bought a drake woodie skin from a well known flyshop up in Maine. It still has so much oil that it's leached into several changes of paper towels on the skin side, and the oil has gotten onto quite a few of the flank feathers on the other side. If I need them, I'll have to pluck, wash, and dry them in order to use them. My main point is, even professionally done, they can still have a lot of fat or oil left over.

Regards,
Mark

[Luke McLeod]

Thanks for the info fellas! Let the plucking commence.