The first week of May here in NY brings the start of Turkey season. My co-worker and neighbor heeded my off hand request from last winter for some leftovers from his turkey hunting. All he wanted was the breast meat, spurs, and beard. I got alll the rest. The carcass has beem cooling it’s heels so to speak in my deep freeze for about 3 weeks, and I thought it was time to get to work on it. It is thawing as I write this. My question is regarding the different uses for the feathers. I know that tail feathers are used. As well as wing feathers. I have also seen breast feathers used as a carapace on a crayfish pattern. I see references to turkey flats, but I am not familiar with that feather. Are there other commonly used feathers that I can harvest? Any other help would be great.
I’m pretty sure you’ll find some marabou on the carcass as well. It will probably be dun colored.
I hadn’t thought of that. Most Marabou is from turkey nowadays isn’t it?
Alot of it is and it’s pretty good material as well. I know you already mentioned the wings but I thought I would also let you know there are biots on the wings as well.
I am not really sure what a biot is. I assumed that they are just a short quilled side of a feather that has that side stripped off. Is that correct? I am also anxious to see if there are any soft hackle type feathers that have short enough fibers to be used on spider type flies.
A biot is a fiber from the fore-feathers on a birds wing ,a.k.a. guard feathers. They are very useful as tail material or wrapped bodies. Reference one of my favorites, A.K. Best’s Green Drake. The body on this fly is a turkey biot. The Copper John is an example of goose biot being used for tails.
Thanks to the good folks here, I pillaged the bird and have a nice selection of wing, tail, breast and back feathers. I also found some small very soft, dark feathers on the upper leg that I am going to try using for a soft hackle dark body hendrickson type spider pattern. A few letort hoppers have just come off my vise. A fishing buddy uses letort hoppers to to imitate caddis (thinking EHC I guess with the deer hair wing) to pretty good results during a caddis hatch. He uses rather large size 8 flies. I have tied a few for him. I guess trout feeding on 14 and 16 sized caddis figure a big one is like a super size order of fries. 
Biot’s will be found on the leading edge of the flight feathers…and can be quite long on the wild turkey. Great material for bodies of mayfly duns…also takes dye’s very well.
Hopefully you match paired the wing and tail feathers (one from left side/wing with one from same location on right side/wing). Great for various flies requiring wings like Muddler Minnows. A few years ago I picked up two turkey road kills within a week, and I now have a lifetime supply of matched wing and tail feathers.
Joe
Yes I did locate the biots, and harvested a few feathers with them. I tried to match wing feathers and managed to make 2 or 3 sets, but my kids were “helping” and things got a little exciting. On the up side they now each have a healthy selection of turkey feathers for their “collections”. The remaing innards, as well as the lovely turkey head, caused quite a bit if excitement as well.
The filo fibers at the base of turkey quills are like maribou but stiffer. They make great tails for streamers. I have had very good luck with bream and smallmouth in the streams of Middle Tennessee using streamers made with these fibers as a tail, a soft body (e.g. peacock diamond braid), a wing and 1 or 2 wraps of undersized, dry fly hackle as a collar (yellow-dyed grizzly is a good choice locally). Consider adding a wisp of red maribou somewhere, like just behind the collar, and you should have some fun.
A last thought, let those flies fry out thoroughly after using.
Ed