Allan P

What do you think of seal fur or p b underfur as a substitute in the pattern The. usual? (can’t seem to find my rabbits feet) thanks

Hi, Welcome back is in order but I must admit I too am just coming back. Not even sure how long I’ve been away but it’s been many years. Had been using my name or maybe ‘tyeflies’?

That piece looks like what is typically sold in shops. You might want to try picking out a hair with a split end. Grasp each end of the split between your thumb and pointer finger of each hand and peel down. Grasp one of the splits and uncurl it like ribbon. Use for a quill body. Also, you can do a search for ‘DST Quills’. Years ago, I and several others, posted information about peccary with some photos of flies using peccary.

I’ve used long dyed P. hair for almost any fly that calls for stripped hackle, peacock herl, or sometimes in place of dubbing. Red, Blue, Ginger quills, Sulphers, Coffin fly, small nymphs and even some comparaduns. I’ve used the real small hairs for tailing and the black tips of hairs for nymph legs. Hair is usable for lots of things. I’ll see if I can photo and post some flies later. Allan P

Here are 2 photos of dyed brown peccary. In both you can see that I used hide that had hairs with a long length of white with little barring. The bottom photo shows a piece of hide and the roughly 7-1/2” long hair. The top is a hair that I partially peeled (like peeling a banana) only halfway down its length. The result is still a tough quill that can use for whatever … For a tapered body I’ll cut the dark tip off, tie it in at the normal tie-in point and wrap forward. Prior to splitting you can carefully run a black magic marker along one edge so that the split quill has a nice segmentation. PS: Hope I posted these photos correctly. Never did this before.

Years ago I had about 3 or 4 collars but I made the mistake of getting rid of them when I moved. Some shops sell peccary/javelina. Several things to note: the hair takes dye easily you can split almost every hair so that each resulting piece is half as thick and makes a great thin body hair is very tough hair does not need to be soaked and wraps easily Depending where on the skin you get the hair, it can be used for tailing, feelers, bodies, legs or whatever you come up with. Allan

If so, for what pattern(s)and how do you like it? Allan p

Just came across this site and topic and I thought to voice my $0.02(overvalued). 1) Select the largest eyes you can and check that the back of the eye has a light cast. 2) IMO the paraffin method works best. This method makes it easy to strip each herl, leaves the remaining quill shiny and pliable, and there’s no soaking necessary. 3) After dipping the eye in the melted paraffin (just about 10 seconds) and when the dip dries, separate the individual herls with a needle/bodkin and cut each off so you can store them individually in a zip lock bag. You can then strip them when needed. Be careful with paraffin. Highly flammable. Allan