Stinky Fur & Feathers
 

I can no longer stand the stink of a couple of items in my fly tying supplies. It makes me sick to my stomach and the dog salivate.

The offending items are one of my grizzly hackles and a piece of fur I can't identify.

Is there any way to salvage the materials, without cutting everything off the hide? Obviously, it is the hide that is the source of the putrid smell. I have used the hackle in a few flies, and there is no obnoxious odor in the feathers. The dog doesn't bother with the feathers once they're removed from the hide, either.

I don't want to throw these things out. I don't want to smell them anymore either.

well I will willing take all your stinky hackle off your hands.
you may try putting an air freshiner into the box/container you keep your hackle in. Might mask the smell a bit.

hahah Your tackle box always stinks:P

um they are not talking about a tackle box, but hackle and fur, something we flyfishing people use to tie fly's. :)

Oh bite me she knows i'm picking on her :P

A great way to speed up your tying is to take all the hackle off the skin and sort them by size. I just put mine in Ziplocs. You can also move the lesser quality hackles into a streamer/wet fly bag.

When you sit down to tie #16 dry flies all of them will have the correct size hackle and you won't have to sort through them while tying.

Unless it's a sizeable piece of fur that you're using a fair bit I'd just pitch it.

It must be my heightened olfactory senses. Be aware! If you any of you are fishing with me . . . don't think you can sneak a fart past me :D

I spend a lot of time asking "What IS that smell?" Everyone looks at me like I'm nuts, as they can't smell a thing.

It's okay. She's a friend (and a cheeky one at that ;) ).

That is a good idea. I know if would solve the stink problem. I might not be able to muster up the motivation.

put it in a zip lock and leave it in the freezer for a couple days. works for stinky boots too

Next time Wayne gets you to try his wine, you'll know where the stink from the boots went ;) :lol:

thats called Bouquet!!!!! or Odeur, or something classy like that for smelly . :evilgrin:
the freezer method really does work tho, for stinky shoes or boots. leave them in for a couple days and it kills the scent forming bacteria.

Ive never noticed any smell coming from my fly tying stuff, but my dog sure can. I was tying a while back and the phone rang. I had to go searching for it. When i got back two minutes later; two 40$ grizzley hackles were de skinned. Just a bunch of feathers left. and there was Hueston, sitting there with a few hackles sticking to his long cold black wet nose! I put the remaining feathers into a bag. Now those feathers are a hassle to use. I like them better attached to the skin.
Hueston also did the same thing to a roast once. Turned my back for only a few seconds and the whole roast was gone. licked the plate clean, as if it was never there. At first i thought i was robbed, but then hueston farted! Busted!!

Happy holidays

Fishstix!!

Hi Dark Aisling,

You could perhaps try absorbing the odors by spraying abit of Febreze into a plastic bag and placing the offensive smelling pieces in. Cat litter might be another optional absorbent material as well.
My guess however is that the hides and/or skins werent properly prepared and you wont easily remove the smells. That being the case you are likely best off discarding and replacing the pieces.

We had a freezer that somehow got unpluged, it was full of meat at the time.
We didn't notice until the meat was pretty ripe, it was hot to the touch.
To get the oder out of the freezer we did a search on the net and found putting unused coffee grounds in the freezer and closing the lid for a few days the oder was completely gone. We're still using the freezer.
This might work if you put the hackle in a freezer bag with some unused grounds.