My buddy called me last night and he has a some pheasant tail hides he wants to give me for tying. I heard I might want to treat those before I use them?? Anyone know that process or if I really need to do it.
Cole Im no expert and hopefully there's more advice out there but if the hides are fresh you can use borax to cure them. I've used it on pheasant and deer hides it workes pretty good, kinda weird but so is using dead animals to catch live fish.
So far it's been a cool project...Here are the broken up sections of the bird before I really dove in and starting finding the treasures. There are some pretty amazing feathers on this bird. There is a lifetime of soft hackle feathers under the dark breast feathers that you would never see unless you had one up close. Didn't have borax but I treated the meatier parts with a good dose of coarse salt to try and get the curing going. Guy that shot it did a pretty good job of cleaning it already...