Pheasant feathers

[kbkpitt]

hello-

I went pheasant hunting recently and secured one whole female bird and the tail feathers from the **** bird.

I left the wings intact and scrapped all the fat and tissue away.

For the body, I pluck about half of the carcass (mostly towards the head) and again scrapped the fat and tissue away from the skin.

To cure the feathers, wings, and carcass, I put them in a dry Coleman cooler with a box of borax. I made sure everything got coated thoroughly.

For the loose feathers, I put them in a large zip loc bag with borax.

Everything has been curing for about a week now. I have burped the cooler.

Here are my questions to you all.

What's the next step? And then the steps after that?
Did I kill all the bugs with the borax?
If the borax isn't enough, what else should I do?
Do I wash everything? If so, in what?

Thank you in advance.

 

[Millsertime]

Growing up in South Dakota, I have hundreds of rooster tail feathers and other type of pheasant feathers. I've never treated any of them. Knock on wood, l continue with this luck. I would think you would be fine.

 

[RLeep2]

With all that prep and if you've successfully removed any residual tissues, you probably aren't going to have any bug problems.

I'd go ahead and package them for use in your tying area. Occasionally check anything that is still attached to the boraxed skin for off color appearance or odor. If you detect anything, just seal it up in a plastic container with some moth crystals for a week or so. That should handle it, I'd think...

 

[carl]

Two freeze thaw cycles are a good precaution.

Freezer for two weeks, Thaw for two weeks
then
Freezer for two weeks.

Sometimes eggs can survive the first freeze. By thawing, you let them hatch and get them back into the freezer before they can do too much damage.


I've also used a microwave and paper towel. 30-60 seconds in the microwave can pop the eggs and will melt some remaining grease that can be sopped up by paper towel and then you can re-borax. This is more important on mammals than birds, but I thought I would mention it.

I would basically quarnatine those feathers for a while. You don't want anything that might be on them to transfer to and saddles you have.