Lots of hunters are fishermen, and lots of fishermen are hunters. But relatively few are also fly-tiers.
Fly-tiers are those strange anglers who, throughout the year, tie flies for fly-fishing in both salt- and fresh water. In their extreme, they are the ones who anguish over whether urine-stained vixen (female fox) belly fur is just the right color to make the dubbing (body) of a Hendrickson dry fly, designed to take trout on the surface.
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A barter system of game parts exchanged for flies can ease hunter?s financial pain of buying flies next spring while helping fly-tiers get some good materials.
Examples would be trading a patch of white-tailed deer hide for a few deer-hair bass bugs, a couple of squirrel tails for some squirrel-tail streamers or spinner dressings, turkey feathers for some grasshopper terrestrials, or a bucktail for some striper/warmwater Lefty?s Deceivers. You can even do it with that vixen red fox hide for some Hendricksons.
Sportsmen have been making such swaps for eons, but it is nice to know that it is legal ? sort of, most of the time. Maryland Code, under the natural resources section 10404, notes that you can legally sell or trade hides, feet and tails of legal game such as deer, squirrel, rabbit or any of the fur-bearing species listed in the 2006-07 Guide to Hunting & Trapping in Maryland. But you can?t sell or barter waterfowl (governed by federal laws) or black bear, nor can you sell a mounted game or bird specimen, according to the law as explained by Sgt. Ken Turner of the Natural Resources Police.
Where you can barter, it?s a good deal for both the fly-fishing hunter and the material-buying tier. You can give parts of any game animal or bird to anyone, but to specifically arrange in advance for a “trade” makes it a barter, and illegal, for game such as bear and waterfowl.
There are other possibilities. Each year, Sheldon?s, makers of the popular Mepps spinners, buys squirrel tails from hunters all over the country, except California, Idaho, Oregon and Texas, where it is illegal. It?s legal in Maryland, with details on how to sell fox, black and gray squirrel tails to Mepps found at www.mepps.com/squirrels or by calling 800-713-3474.
Prices paid, depending upon quality, are from 16 cents to 26 cents each (for more than 1,000 premium tails!), with the cash value doubled if the tails are traded for Mepps spinners.
Gosh. With a lot of squirrel hunting, there is no telling how much money a man could make this way!
C. Boyd Pfeiffer is an internationally-known sportsman and award-winning writer on fishing, hunting and the outdoors, and he has more than 20 books to his credit. He can be reached at [email protected].
