fresh Kills

[letumgo]

Yeah, good post, Joe.

[hankaye]

Howdy All;

Yeah, good post, Joe.

Thought trying to tye anything with a Pheasents head would be like Rascal trying to tye something,
can't do it ..... no thumbs .....
good post post Joe, ,

hank

[Mataura mayfly]

Opposing thumbs or not, it is possible to skin bird heads out. Easier if the head is still attached to the body, but if you still have plenty of neck attached to the head you can skin it out as a cape. Split the skin from the bottom of the severed neck up the throat to the underside of the beak, with fingers and thumbs and careful use of a blade it is possible to roll the skin from the neck and the head. You may have to cut around the eye areas to prevent tearing and this is sometimes easier done with scissors. When removed to the beak area trim the skin from the beak with the blade or scissors.
Then treat with borax as suggested above after scraping all flesh and fats you can from the hide.

If the wings have been removed tight against the body there will be a fair amount of flesh still in the skin. It is possible to hold the wing at the first joint and push the bottom bone/flesh out the hole where the wing was removed, then clip through the joint exposed, removing the bottom bone and the majority of flesh. Strong scissors or garden secateurs can be used for this cut.
Then treat as suggested by packing with borax. If the donor bird was prepared for the table then odds are the wing was removed from the first joints already and you can just go with the borax packing.
I simply air dry duck wings for my own use that have been removed at the first joint, but they are for personal use and I do not send wings overseas that are untreated.

Clip the main feathers from the tail and give them a good freeze before using. If they are attached to a rump section you wish to keep then scrape and give a thorough borax application or three, bird rumps (especially water fowl) contain a lot of fats and oils and can spoil very quickly if left untreated.

Follow the borax, reapplication of borax, drying and freezing methods suggested above and you will not go far wrong.

[crazy4oldcars]

Freeze dry?

Put the head and/or wings in an open container in your frost-free freezer. The only problem is, I have no idea how long this would take.
Another option for the wings would be to clip and bag matched pairs (if that is how you will use them) and freeze/microwave/wash/repeat to kill critters and eggs.

After everything is clean and dry, put them in a shoebox for a week with REAL mothballs. Real mothballs have Napthalene as the primary ingredient. The "low odor" variety won't cut it for this purpose. It may repel, but it won't kill. Mothballs also require a closed or mostly closed environment to achieve saturation, which is where they are working their best. I have a 10-drawer cabinet that I keep my materials in, and each drawer that contains natural materials has a couple of mothballs rolling around in it. When they get down to about 1/8" in diameter, I throw another one in. That seems to be about every 6 months-ish.

Ariel, Good luck with the new materials, and we look forward to seeing some ties!

Have fun with this stuff!

Kirk

[fflutterffly]

I certainly will be posting ties if I can make this work out. I just got my fly tying mag and there is an article on Lee Wulff!!! I picked up some Enoz that should work. Great advice. I'll start the process on Tuesday. At the moment they are residing, triple bagged, in my freezer. Thanks all and I hope the good luck washes out on me.