Pheasants

I asked a friend to hook me up with a few pheasant feathers this past season and was treated to several freezer bags full of feathers and plenty of tails. I came up with a few simple patterns. These are both on 1/32oz lead-free heads with nail polish. Left jig's body is home blended dubbing with pheasant tail, right jig's body/wing is a palmered back feather with a pheasant tail.
View attachment 5

Good looking jigs - Hope those feathers got cleaned good before he sent them. Would hate to see any bug problems.

fm- Yep, no treatment on those feathers, they've been in my freezer for almost 2 months though. I sorted a bunch of them and separated like feathers into zip locks. What I've been doing is just grabbing a few feathers at a time from the freezer and tying what I need. I'm not to familiar on the proper way to treat fresh feathers (borax?), so I've been playing it "safe" by keeping them in the freezer. Do you have process to recommend?

Creeky, those look nice. All my feathers just get put in the freezer...... no problems yet.

Like them both. Your dubbing body might look good on the built-up shank of a bass jig. Well done. :icon14:

Soon you will be ready to tie something like this smallmouth bass jig as you acquire more pheasant feather expertise.

Just forget about my implicit suggestion if you don't fish for smallmouth bass.

:icon14: :icon14:

Way to go. That is the one thing that I miss about the mid west is the pheasant hunting. Dang they make some pretty jigs.

Redman

quivira kid said:

Creeky, those look nice. All my feathers just get put in the freezer...... no problems yet.

Click to expand...

creekychub said:

fm- Yep, no treatment on those feathers, they've been in my freezer for almost 2 months though. I sorted a bunch of them and separated like feathers into zip locks. What I've been doing is just grabbing a few feathers at a time from the freezer and tying what I need. I'm not to familiar on the proper way to treat fresh feathers (borax?), so I've been playing it "safe" by keeping them in the freezer. Do you have process to recommend?

Click to expand...

SO, this big bag of Pheasant feathers I got from a friend may be "BUGGY"?!?!

They may be safe but I always wash mine. Dawn dish soap and then rinse good, I put mine in a paper bag with a hole cut in the side close the top and hair dryer on low and let em blow around in the bag. when they're dry sort and put in bags. Some swear by the freezer method but I learned how from Ron Lucas who ties full dress classic Salmon flies and he's got massive money in feathers!!! And clean feathers just seem to tie better.

Here's the article by Ron - look at all the bins and containers!!! With some of the stuff Ron uses - one bug!!! could destroy ten's of thousands of dollars in materials. http://www.hatchesmagazine.com/page/february2006/111

Much rather bring it up then have someone lose all their tying materials!!!

Really nice!!! Well that settles it, I'm going to Michaels and get a bag of Pheasent feathers and tails.

I saw those sitting on the shelf in the other photo and was hoping to get to see them - excellent jig both!

FM- I agree, better to be safe than sorry.
Thanks for the comments everyone!

Nice jig and nice tying. I like your dubbing mix