Complete Natural Ringneck Pheasant Skin Pelt Without Wing and Tails (Bulk) Fly Tying Dog Training | Amazon | Moonlight Feather

What I was hoping for!

I bought this for use as photography background material. I had forgotten how stunning the plumage of a ringneck cock pheasant is. I think I will put it in a picture frame in my shop when it's not needed for camera work. My pelt is about 10 x 14 inche oval and is slightly domed. As others have noted, it came with a lot of curing salt. Despite many holes in the skin, or pelt, the feathers were remarkably intact - not so much a concern for for the fly tying folks as it is for me and my use in photography.Probably just salted and dried, the skin is very thin for the most part, not very pliable, with some hard strips around the edges where the skin tissue is thicker. While I don't need a soft, pliable pelt for my use, I don't want it to crack or tear either.Decided that I would remove the remaining salt, oil the skin with a leather softener, and then hot melt glue a piece of felt fabric to the skin side to protect it as well as dress it up a bit. I carefully vacuumed as much salt as I could from the skin side, using a soft brush attachment and a vac nozzle with a bypass vent to reduce the suction. With the reduced suction and by bringing just one edge of the vac brush close to the pelt, I was able to gently vacuum salt out of the feathers as well. Obviously this could go terribly wrong with too much suction.After removing as much salt as I could, I brushed on a thin coat of Neat's foot oii onto the skin side. After leaving the oil soak in for about half an hour, I began blotting it up with paper towels. Repeated blotting until I was satisfied that there was just enough oil left to be useful, but not so much as to mess up the hot melt gluing.I cut a piece of felt that covered the pelt plus another half an inch all around the edges of the pelt, figuring that would help protect the edge feathers. With the pelt skin side up and the felt positioned, I gently clamped the two pieces together at one end of the pelt. Gluing the felt to the pelt was pretty standard hot gluing. I folded the other end of felt back half way towards the clamps, and squeezed a line of hot glue drops about an inch apart onto the skin, parallel to the fold in the felt. Moving quickly while the glue was still hot, I unfolded the felt onto the glue drops, and held them together for about ten seconds. I folded the felt back up to the glue line, and ran another line of glue drops about an inch from the first line, repeating until the first half of the pelt and the felt were glued together. Then I removed the clamps and repeated the process for the second half of the pelt.Because I put drops of glue down about an inch apart over all of the skin side of the pelt, the felt followed the irregularities of the pelt as well. It should be very effective in reinforcing and protecting the pelt.

arrived in fantastic condition. Was exactly as ordered.

I bought this for tying flies for fishing. It's got tons of feathers with different patterns and styles. The church window feathers make great streamers, I've used the neck feathers to replace jungle cock. The feathers at the bottom make good soft hackle. Overall it was a great purchase

I am not certain what the substance is that is all over it. It seems something like salt. However, the pelt is just as I had hoped.

Inspections are so beautiful. And there's many of them!

Exactly as shown; short delivery time

Beautiful colors. Very nice.