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sticknhook

red fox fur

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Hi, I'm new to the forum and just beginning to tie. I'm planning on tying a few Foxee Red Clousers and am looking at pelts on the Moscow Hide and Fur website. There is quite a range of quality and, of course, price. The cheaper pelts typically are missing some areas. Besides the belly fur for the FRC, what parts should be intact for future warm water and trout flies? To ask it another way, what parts could the pelt be missing without affecting future tying? Knowing this would help save quite a bit of money.

 

Thanks for the response(s) and for a great site!

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Guest rich mc

most important for that fly is the red streak on the tail more info on tying that fly at flyfishohio.com rich mc

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If you're looking at buying a fox hide from Moscow, they show pictures on their site, so you should have a pretty good idea what you'll be getting. I almost always buy the cheapest stuff, which has always been good for tying. The better hide grades, and the more expensive are better suited for hanging on a wall, or making garments. Most of the time, the price difference does not warrant buying the more expensive hides IMO. On a red fox hide, the back, belly, & tail will have the most usable hair for many types of flies. The legs has some shorter hair that can be used for dubbing, and the mask (face) can be used, but if either are not there, you could still have plenty of hair to tie with. Most poorer graded hides will have rubbed spots, this means the hair is missing or very thin. A small spot on a complete hide will devalue it, but not usually enough to be an issue for tying. If you're intention is to only cut hair from the hide, a raw, untanned hide will be fine. If you might want to make "zonker" strips, you'll want a tanned hide. Tanned hides will be more money than raw. I've bought several things from Moscow & have never been disappointed with anything I've gotten. I have bought items that were a bit more than the very cheapest, but only because I liked the look of the fur better. A whole fox hide will tie a lot of flies. :)

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Wow, thanks everyone for the feedback. This really helps. It sounds like back, belly, and tail are the crucial areas for tying. There are a number of cheaper pelts missing a leg or two, or even a head, so I will pick up one of those.

 

Tidewater, thanks especially for all the detail; to a beginner, that's gold. Another of your responses came through my regular email via the site and I responded to that one before checking here. So, please ignore the redundancy. I'm still trying to figure out the navigation here, especially as this is the first forum I've ever joined.

 

By the way, is "Baitfisher" a tag all newbies here get? I sure didn't type that in at any point! Admittedly, my daughter did hook a heck of a catfish last summer on a worm we dug up in the garden...

 

Thanks again all. It's great to be sharing this addiction.

 

David

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David, I sent you some additional info via the PM system, and yes, all newbies are "Bait Fisherman" until you've posted more.

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