goose, ducks, and doves

troutmagnet

troutmagnet

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Joined
May 16, 2011
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i will be hunting for geese, snow and Canada, ducks, all kind but mallards woodies black ducks blue and green wing teel, and doves. i was wondering what feathers are good for tying all kinds of nymphs and easy patterns, as i will be getting a vise soon. Thanks
 
Every feather from anyone of the named birds are great for fly tying. I would recommend that you keep the entire skin. If you get an extra wood or mallard duck you dont want you can send my way. ;-)
 
And when he says send his way, what he really means, is send it to me :)
 
haha well my buddy is relly good at duck hunting and ima get all the skins from him and ill see what i end up ith and maybe ill hook you guys up.
 
JU, you stole the words outta my mouth!! :D
 
troutmagnet,
one thing I have found that makes it easy to process the wings is lay them both together on your work bench and pull the feathers out one by one. You take the first feather from the right wing and take the first feather on the left wing pull them and tape them together and work you way down the wings like that. Then there is no trying to get all the meat out of the wings and drying them with borax just throw the unneeded part of the wing away and your done. I always wash and dry the wing pairs and they are ready to use and exactly paired for making wings on dry or wet flies. Make sure when you skin the rest of the bird you put them between newspaper and use borax and salt to dry them. you may need to check them and change the paper and borax on occassion because they are very greasy and take a while to dry. Hope this helps
 
A good cheap book to pick up would be From Field to Fly by Scott J. Seymour. I use his very simple methods and they work great.

With wings, I like to keep the wings together. The covert (shoulder) feathers of water fowl make great soft hackles.
 
ok thanks, the youth season is really soon like 1 week or 2 but im ready and hopefully we get sum birds.
 
keep in mind it may be illegal to sell or give a dove feather or fly made from one,but perfectly legal to use them if you harvested them yourself.

that said,dove feathers make AWESOME soft hackle.
 
same here with waterfowl feathers, if you have any extra flank, breast, or wing quills, send them my way...
 
shakey wrote:
keep in mind it may be illegal to sell or give a dove feather or fly made from one

Give? I thought if it was passed freely, it was OK but if it was sold/bartered you ran afoul of the migratory species act or somesuch?
 
It IS ok to give, NOT ok to sell. It's in the Game laws information booklets.
 
I tie alot of soft hackles. I dry out whole skins using borax and salt and leave them by the woodstove for a couple weeks. If I'm lazy or in a hurry in the field, I just cut the wings off with a garden shears and pluck the body feathers in to ziplocs. When I get home I treat the wings with salt and borax ( alot quicker than skinning and stretching a whole skin). I also leave the ziploc of feathers open by the fire until they ought to be dry. I keep all of this stuff well away from my other materials until after they have dried AND I have ran each ziploc of new stuff through the microwave for 20-30 seconds to kill any remaining critters which might be hiding in the feathers. Even so, I like to store these wild feathers in plastic tubs separate from my store bought stuff - just in case. I really love Drake GW Teal flanks and hen GWT body feathers for soft hackles. I have never tied a fly with Mourning dove but it looks as though it would make a good sub for French Partridge (aka Chukar).
 
In reply to "Utah", Is there any other books out there anyone suggests on preparing your own fly materials from your own hunting harvests? I just ordered the book mentioned by Utah, looks great! Just wondered if there were others with the same type of info or info on dyeing and bleaching techniques etc....!

Thanks
KCF
 
"Dying and Bleaching..." by A.K. Best comes to mind. I believe it may have been published by Stackpole. Not sure of the complete title, but you can google it.
 
http://www.flymphforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2203

More on this issue of preparing your own stuff.
 
Dying and bleaching natural fly tying materials by A.K. Best is a great book.
 
today i shot a wood duck, and i got some feather bot not all.
 
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