Treating game bird feathers?
- This topic has 12 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated Feb 5, 2010 at 6:12 am by
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I don’t hunt, but a coworker has given me a bag full of grouse feathers and wings that look too good not to use.
The plucked feathers look great, but the wings still have some meat left at the base.
My feelings are to get the feathers off of the meat asap and put them in a ziplock in the freezer for a few days to a week to kill bad stuff. I handle birds that have been dead for a while w rubber gloves but maybe thats just me. I dont hunt but I get a lot of feathered carcass oppurtunities bc I work with a lot of hunters. I have seen dudes get infections from small game, but I have never had the problem. My 2 cents…
I have some friends that use borax, but to tell you the truth, unless you know what your doing with curing capes and other materials, I would trash it. If you do not do it correctly, you would run the risk of infecting your entire feather stock. I have seen it more than once. Either learn the proper way to deal with the recently deceased or buy.
Just my 0.02,
DustyWhen one of our chickens die I pluck what I want, put them in a zip lock and into the freezer they go. After a month or so I remember them, pull em out and ad a moth ball or two.
Your advice from the others is right on. The wings with the meat still on them…may be more hassle than its worth.
Just had one of these girls bite the dust…beautiful neck hackle!
I have to disagree with these guys. I have treated a number of pelts (pheasant, chukar, squirrel, elk, deer, roadrunner, great blue heron, and then some) both that I’ve killed personally and received from other hunters (not all of those are strictly legal, I understand). I always do the same thing: salt the everliving crap out of the flesh side of the pelt and then nail the thing to a board in my garage for a few weeks (like 2-3).
I’ve had the same salted pelts in my tying drawer now for over 8 years in some cases; no issues whatsoever. Salt is a great preservative, and it’s much easier to use the feathers when they’re not all loose in the bag. Real tanners use Borax and various solutions to make the hide supple (salt makes it stiff), but as long as you individually bag everything in ziplocs (and maybe hit it with some Raid or something to kill the mites if you think you have a problem), I say you’re fine. Just wash your hands when you’re done tying. And maybe keep your personal kills in a separate drawer from your $100 capes.
The one caveat I would add is that you need to completely skin out the wings: don’t leave the bones in there or they’ll go rancid no matter how much salt you add.
Zach
After seeing all the responses I have jump in and tell you the proper way to treat these wings. As a taxidermist for over 30 years I have seen my share of mistakes that people make with their fly tying materials. One of them is improper preparation of their bird feathers.
To start with split the wings on the under side of the wing all the way to the last joint with a knife or scalpel. For fly tying purposes remove all the bones, humerous, radius, metacarpals. Once the bones are removed all remaining meat and fat needs to be removed from the skin and around the feather quils that protrude into the skin. You can do this by scrapeing it off with the end of your knife or by using a wire brush in a drill motor (much faster but messy). I use a commercial bird flesher which is a wire brush on a motor encased in an acrylic housing to catch all the fat and goo that is thrown off of the skin.
Once the skinning process is finished the wing needs to be washed to remove any blood, lice, mites, or fat from the fleshing process. Place the whole wing in a sink and fill with cold water and a mild detergent soap, Dawn dish soap works well. Allow this to soak for 30 minutes, then rinse and towell dry. Once the washing process is complete the wings can be dried with a shop vac turned around to blow air. Just blow them until they are completly dry. All the under fluff should be fluffed back to original. The feathers when dry will re-marry and should fluff back the the original state and even better since they are clean.
At this point you can place some Borax on the inside of the skin. Borax is a bug deterent not a bug killer, they do not like the taste of borax. The bugs you are woried about are Dermestid Beetles which attack anything with protene in it. If you prepare the skin properly and all fat and flesh is removed you will not have problems with your bird feathers/skins.
I acutally de-fat and wash even my neck hackles and any skins that I purchase. It seems that even the best neck hackles still have fat attached to them and the producers remedy is to put a fat absorption pack behind the neck.
I hope this helps
Stuartfat absorption pack behind the neck
Ah, that is what that white packing is for.
As an avid grouse hunter I have kept grouse feathers for years and I never had a problem. I do pluck them immediately and I do use borax. Then I place the ziploc bags in a separate area.
Also, I do supplement with a English grouse cape and Western grouse cape that I buy online (they are cheap to buy) to get extra shades, colors and sizes. But even those i put in separate bags and throw in some borax to be safe.
The only bug issues I have ever had came from bucktails, not bird feathers.
Soft hackles, small buggers, sculpins and epoxy coated wing cases.
Mostly, I hang the tail fans in my garage.
The ol’ classic March Brown hare’s ear wet fly spider. Also, numerous nymphs, emergers, and soft hackle patterns.
I also like the Cooksville English Grouse cape as well, because it has darker feathers.
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