Never thought of doing this to get tying materials...

[MathFish]

My brother came across this article on National Geographic's news stories. It is a pretty crazy story about a 20 year old American who broke into the British Museum of Natural History to steal very rare bird skins to tie exotic flies and to sell the rare feathers to other fly tiers!

It sounds like he didn't get into too much trouble over it either! Hopefully this story doesn't plant any ideas into the minds of any other obsessive tiers out there...

National Geographic article

I wasn't sure if this should be in the Fly Tying page or not, but I figured the greater fly fishing community might get a kick out of this.

 

[salmonoid]

"Avocation had become obsession, locking him in a kind of fly-tying arms race with other practitioners of the art."

That's about the only way I'd see someone going to that extreme to tie flies.. I'm not that good of a fly-fisherperson that using rare feathers is going to up my fishing game, at all.

 

[eunanhendron]

This is a very well known story in the salmon fly tying circles - which causes much debate.

I started reading the book this week.

 

[nfrechet]

10 year old story

 

[Solitariolupo]

Thanks for the laugh never heard this one before.

 

[jacob]

Listen to the Orvis podcast - Tom interviews the guy that wrote the book about the dude who stole everything, very interesting.

 

[tctrout]

Reading the book now, "The Feather Thief." Incredible story, and highly recommended reading for fly tiers.

On a related note, the quote that this story "causes much debate" is an understatement. Many tiers purchased the skins and found out they were stolen, yet when given the opportunity to return them...crickets.

The book is subtitled with the word "Obsession," and that fits this story perfectly!

Tim