The Flytiers Benchside Reference, has an excellent chapter on deer hair, good discussion with lots of photos. Too much info to reproduce here. If you don’t want a copy for your personal library try to get a look at this fine manual in a local shop or at your public library. (best tying book I own, couldn’t be without it.)
In a nut shell, don’t get too hung up on what hair the hair is called. The individual tying properties are far more important than what animal or what part of what animal it came from. As a natural material there is going to be a lot of variation from patch to patch.
Deer hair (as well as elk, antelope, carribou, moose, etc) has a hollow shaft that becomes more dense towards the tip. The hollow shaft provides floatation and makes the hair flare when tied in. The tips are more dense so they don’t aid in floatation and they flare less. Sometimes there is a distinct color change where the shaft transitions from hollow to solid. Some hair is hollow for 90% of its length, some for about half, and some is almost solid for the whole length.
Hair types vary greatly, depending on species, season when the animal was taken, age or sex of the animal and where on the body the material was harvested. The shops try to address this with very descriptive labels, like ‘Eastern coastal deer cow hair’. In my experiance the label doesn’t mean as much as some simple testing. Properties just vary too much from patch to patch.
Take a small bundle of hair and tie it in at its mid point. If the hair flares to an angle more than 45 degrees it is mostly hollow and best for spinning. If it flares to about 45 degrees it is semi-hollow and it good for caddis wings. If it flares less than 45 degrees it is more solid, perfect for upright wings and tails. Now try the same experiment but tie the hair in at a point 1/3 of the length from the tips, notice how the tie in point effects the flare. If there is a distinct color change try tying in a bundle right where the color goes from light to dark. You can get the hair to flare a lot in the butt section and very little in the tip section, perfect for collars on muddler minnows.
Once I figure how much flare and where the optimum tie in point is I label the back of the patch with marker. Something like ‘lots of flare, use for spinning’ or ‘good for for size 16 thru 14 caddis’.
With some experiance you can predict how a patch will behave with a visual inspection. Course hair of light color with very small dark tips is probaly good for spinning. Fine textured hair with the tip color extending more than 50% of the length is going to be better for upright wings and tails.
