Thanks Larry
"Larry Medina" wrote in message
. com...
Kevin wrote:
I have a bunch of buck tails. I soaked them in sal****er. Dried them
out
and they still don't smell very good. Also I have some turkey feathers
what's the best way to clean them to prevent bugs from contaminating my
other materials.

Bucktails need to be washed as soon as they're removed from the bone.
They should be washed in a mixture of borax and detergent in warm water,
then rinsed thoroughly under running warm water, then dried as much as
possible and stretched out and the raw skin coated with a mixture of
borax and salt, 50/50 that is changed periodically as it becomes dry or
changes color.

The tails should then be combed clean and frozen, then thawed and frozen
twice more to ensure any bugs and or their eggs are completely dead.
Any and all extra skin should then be trimmed away and the tails should
be packed in ziploc bags and placed away from any other commercially
purchased materials, just in case there were some eggs you missed. Check
them periodically to see if any eggs or dead bugs show up in the bags.

Turkey feathers (or other wild game) should be plucked and whatever is
contaminated with blood, feces or other "organic matter" should be
discarded. Any and all meat and skin needs to be removed/scraped from
the quills. If they are wing or tail feathers, you shouldn't need to do
much to them, but they should go through the same 2-3 freezings and
thawings mentioned above and then should be packaged similarly and
stored away from commercially purchased materials. If it's body
feathers, just pluck what you think you might use, and package them and
freeze/thaw them too.

It may sound a bit anal, but the worst thing you can experience is
finding a $50-60 dollar saddle chewed up by bugs because you wanted to
save $3 on a bucktail or $6-7 on some turkey feathers....

Larry