Tying deer belly hair?

[Barnacle Bill]

Whats the secret for tying this type hair? I don't have any problem with tail hair but with the belly hair it always looks like a woman with a super bad hair day.

[BarryG]

You GOT to get the deer to be still while you are tying it!!!! :D :D

[willsjwills]

Belly hair from northern deer is hollow. That's the deer's insulation to a degree. Most southern deer don't have hollow hair, only if the weather gets unusually cold. Even some northern bucktails will have some hollow hair, but southern bucktails will have mostly solid hair. The solid hairs always have worked best for me. I am from the south and prefer bucktails that i collect during deer season that I bone out, dry, and dye.

making a jig with it kinda resembles Phillis Diller's hairdo.

[skiptomylu]

Whats the secret for tying this type hair? I don't have any problem with tail hair but with the belly hair it always looks like a woman with a super bad hair day.

Mostly belly or "premo" deer hair is for spinning deer hair flies, not that they don't use non premo for that too, it's just better. That is where you want it to stand on ends and you put so much of it then you use a razor blade to cut away what you don't want.

I have done a little of this, but not enough to get good yet. I do plan of getting better and have done a few jigs. It's a very cool type of tying IMHO.

Here is one I did last year and it's not that good, but should give you an idea of what I mean (actually I should have packed it on even tighter)...


Skip

[Barnacle Bill]

It being hollow makes sense as to why it stands up. That looks good to me Skip.

[Darryl Morris]

I stopped tying my own and just threw away two gallon bags of deer hair (gray and white) I had frozen. What a waste I'm sure, but anyone that's serious about it, I guarantee since we are on the water most every day we can get more fur and feathers to'em than they can use. Of course, that is in exchange for a few jigs for field trials.