When tying a standard type dry fly with only one color hackle , I have seen some people still use two diffrent hackle feathers. Is there some unseen advantage to this that I dont know? Couldnt you just make a few more turns with the same feather? Seems wastfull to cut down two nice hackle feathers.
It may depend on the quality of the feathers they are using. There is only a certain usable section on a feather. They may be selecting those sections.
I usually use Dry Saddle hackle, so I use one feather, as much hackle as I want.
If the feather has noticeable taper to it, only the fibers near the tip may be short enough for the fly, so using more feathers is necessary to get a full enough hackle.
using whitings 100 pack you can get 6-8 dry flies out of 1 feather
Hi Texfly,
JC hit the nail right on the head. With good quality hackle only one feather is usually needed to properly hackle a fly unless you are tying a fly that must float through a Tsunami. Old Indian and Chinese necks (very low quality) required at least two feather to properly do one fly. 8T 
Thanks for the feed back guys. Better quality hackle does seem to require fewer wraps. I did recently buy some of the hundred packs. Boy do they take the guess work out of it. When sized they seem to be very consistent , just grab’em and go.
I tie primarily with capes and will use 2 feathers for size 14 and larger flies unless I specifically want a sparser tie. What I’ll try and do is blend my hackle colors - if possible I won’t use 2 feathers from the same cape. Say I want to hackle with a ginger color, I might wrap a ginger and a barred ginger or a ginger and brown (if I have those colors available). I like the blended look and I think it helps the fly look a little more “natural.”
Does it help catch more fish? I don’t know but I think we mostly tie for ourselves anyways and I like the look. I’ve only been tying for 3 years or so but it’s the style I’ve developed over that period of time.
If using a saddle (I’m a Whitings 100 fan myself), one can tie in the feather at the eye, palmer back behind the wings to the body, and then palmer forward again to the eye. This will make an extremely bushy hackle to provide good support if needed.