The selection of deer or elk hair is critical. Here is a primer I wrote for another site.
All deer and elk hair have a hollow body section and a solid tip section. The hair also undergoes a color change from darker to lighter to darker from bottom to top. Most of the time, the solid tips are of a darker color that are distal to the lighter section. For comparaduns, you want hair with short and even tips. By even tips, I mean the solid tips section of of equal lengths. When you stack hair with even tips, the color break from the lighter hollow section to the darker solid section will occur at the same place on all the hair and the wing of the comparadun will look even. If the tip sections are not of equal length, the hair may be of equal length when tied in, but the wing will look ragged because the color break point looks ragged.
Secondly, try to get hair which not only has even tips but even length. This is difficult to do, but when you do, the tips are even on the fur. With this type of hair, you can tie the flies without stacking because the tips will be lined up on the fur and the tips will be even when cut from the fur. When examining hair insert a piece of white paper behind the hair to examine the dark tips. I take a 3X5 card with me for this purpose.
Thirdly, the hair must be resilient, and flair evenly when compressed. Do not buy hair that will crack when compressed. You can check this by taking the hair out of the package and pinching the hair at the point you are going to tie it in. I pinch it between my index finger and my thumbnail. It should flair evenly and the hair should not break. Hair that is bleached or dyed can become brittle, so always check bleached or dyed hair for brittleness.
Finally, the best hair has minimal under fur. The less under fur, the less you need to remove before tying the the hair. This is a minor point but I mention it for completeness.
I never buy hair that I cannot examine. Hair should not generally be bought sight unseen unless the seller knows exactly what you want and will preselect it for you. In every fly shop that I visit, I look at their hair selection. Whenever I find an excellent piece of hair, I’ll buy it because a lot of it is not very good.
For SMALL flies, it is CRITICAL to get hair with SHORT TIPS. If the tips are long, most or all of the hair you tie in will be solid and not hollow.
Here are some photos of two patches of excellent comparadun hair.
This shows two patches of dark and light hair side by side. Although the hair may look long on this close up, it is actually about an inch from skin to tip.
This is a closer view of the dark hair for better contrast to see the even tips and the coloration changes. Notice that the hair shafts that are on the same relative “row” of the pelt line up so that the tips and lighter bands are even across the row.
Here is a close up of the tips taken with white paper to bring out the tips. Notice how you can now see the very short dark colored solid tips above the lighter banded section. The length of the hair is only about an inch so that the solid tips are very short although they may look longer on this macro photo. Notice how even the tips are across the white background. This is what you are looking for.
