Deer Body Hair

Deer body hair is long and has mottled tips, a thin wall, and a large inside diameter. Deer body hair can come from the body of a whitetail or mule deer, and there are significant differences in the color of the hair from either species. Mule deer hair tends to lean more toward a mousy gray brown color with dark mottled tips, while whitetail hair is more of a creamy tan shade with lighter tips. I've always read directions in other books that say to use hair from along the back for this use, and hair from along the flanks for that use and wondered how many people really go out and buy an entire deer hide? Generally, you're faced with a wall of hair at the local fly shop, all cut into tidy little rectangles with no indication of which body part they formerly occupied. Knowing what to look for in these little chunks will serve you much better than learning the entire anatomy of the deer.

We will use deer body hair for the Comparadun wing and the body on the Goddard Caddis. For the Goddard Caddis, you want the hair to spin, so look for deer hair with long butt ends with large diameters and thin walls. Picking out a piece of hair with larger diameter butts is easy enough, but trying to determine wall thickness requires a little trick. Press your thumbnail into the hair at its base and note how much the hair flares under pressure. Hair that buckles up wildly is what you want; hair that merely stands up a little probably has walls that are too thick for a fly like this.The condition of the tips of the hair is of little consequence, as you will be cutting them off before tying the hair to the hook. I typically select this hair to have all of the above characteristics as well as nicely mottled tips.The tips can come into play on larger flies with spun deer hair heads and collars, so you may as well try to kill both birds with one piece of hair.The large butt diameter of this hair contributes to the floatation of the finished fly, while the thin wall makes the hair easier to compress, flare, and spin around the hook.

Conversely, the tips of the hair you'll use for the Comparadun need to be quickly tapered to a sharp point and have a short overall length with slightly larger diameter butts.This hair is often sold as Comparadun Hair and usually comes from a whitetail deer, although it is sometimes from coastal deer that resemble mule deer hair more than that of a whitetail.This short deer body hair needs to have quickly tapered tips to form the wing on the Comparadun so there is still some hollowness to the hair at the tips. Hair with long wispy tips may be useable for larger-sized flies, but on smaller #18s or #20s, where the proportionate wing length becomes much shorter, these wispy tips provide no floatation and do not flare as well as hair with more diameter.You want the butt ends of the Comparadun hair to be larger diameter so they flare on the shank when you tie them down, spreading the tips in a nice arc across the top of the shank, which helps the fly float.

Deer Belly Hair

Deer belly hair comes from a whitetail deer and is a bright white color in its natural state.This white hair takes dyes extremely well, which produces vibrant, colorful hair.The tips of deer belly hair are generally pretty ragged, but this is of little concern as this hair is typically used for spinning large bass bugs and similar flies.This hair is large diameter with a thin wall (but not as thin as deer body hair) and has a somewhat waxy texture. Deer belly hair is coarser and slightly stiffer than deer body hair but spins beautifully and creates durable hair bodies. Its larger diameter makes it a bit harder to work with than body hair, but the somewhat thicker wall also makes this hair more durable. I find this hair a bit coarse to work with on smaller trout flies, but love it for my bigger hair-bodied bass flies. Incidentally, dyeing the hair can change its characteristics, but this usually stems from a subpar dye job that uses too much heat. Quality hair dyed by companies like Nature's Spirit is a pleasure to use.

Calf Body Hair

A good piece of calf body hair will be one of your best finds. Calf body hair is fine and often somewhat wavy. The most useable calf hair is dense and straight, making it much easier to clean and stack than its wavy counterparts. Tiers come into the shop all the time complaining about the overall quality of calf body hair, and for the most part I have to agree with them. Most commercially available calf hair is extremely short, wavy, and sparse, rendering it perhaps the most frustrating of all materials to work with. A bad piece of calf body hair is enough to make you give up on the hair and look for an alternative.

So, what to do? Keep looking. There is some good hair out there. In my shop, I typically order calf hair two dozen pieces at a time. Out of those twenty-four patches of hair, a little more than half is useable, and the remainder is typically garbage and goes back to the supplier. Most shops just put them all on the peg and leave it up to you to know what to look for.The inherent process of elimination leaves these weak links on the peg for eternity, and the shop owner doesn't order any more because, well,the peg is full.What's left for you is the garbage.Ask your favorite shop's fly-tying guru to order a new batch of hair and perhaps even bribe him into letting you high-grade through the patches when they arrive. Tying gurus are easily bought off with shiny bits of flash and pretty materials, not unlike crows or raccoons.

Once you have a new batch of calf hair in front of you, look for densely packed hair with few bare spots or sparse areas. You'll want hair that is as straight as possible, although if a small portion of the patch is wavy and the rest is straight, it is still a viable candidate. Calf hair is generally short, but select the longest hair that you can find. If you can find a patch with hair that is three-quarters of an inch or longer, you are doing pretty well. Check for nicely tapered and intact tips; broken tips on calf hair ruin the overall effect you want on flies like Royal Wulffs and other hairwings.When you find good calf hair, grab several pieces so you'll have them when you need them.