Have you ever wondered where all the colourful fly tying materials in your local fly fishing shop come from and how they were produced? Very few have, but it is definitely worth giving a bit of consideration.
without thinking about how that dubbing had ended up in my local fly tying shop. Had it involved doubtful slaughtering and skinning methods, and were the seals really threatened like Greenpeace seemed to be suggesting?
MY FLY TYING ARCHIVES are teeming with colourful and exotic fly tying materials. They have been accumulated throughout the years and have been systematized with great care. A lot of the materials are synthetic, but quite a few of them are natural. This, for instance, is the case with the many hackle capes and the marabou and CDC feathers. It is also the case with a lot of the dubbing materials that I use so frequently, as well as all the pieces of skin that I cherish – skins that stem from animals like polar fox, elk, moose, goat, mink, opossum, racoon, kangaroo, and hares. In an old archive, where a large collection of classic salmon fly tying materials are stowed away, golden pheasant-, kingfisher-, and guinea fowl skins are stored. This archive also contains feathers from parrots, Amherst pheasants, macaw, wood duck, ostrich, Eurasian Jay, turkey, and jungle cock – just to name those that come to my mind first.
If there’s one thing life has taught me, it is to be sceptical of all radicalized representations of the truth - if it even makes sense talking about such a thing in finite terms. But even though I couldn’t know for sure, where my own fly tying materials were stemming from - and whether or not Greenpeace’s claims were trustworthy - I was no longer capable of buying natural fly tying materials without speculating on how they had been made, and whether or not the production of them could be legitimized in light of their intended use. Were my flies really so important, that unnecessary blood had to be spilt?
AS A KID it was fascinating to enter the fly tying shops and squander away all my pocket money. With their textures, glows, colours and unlimited applications, the fly tying materials constituted a creative treasure trove - with a small attached hope that the resulting flies would later induce some heady strikes. The materials were picked frantically from the display walls and brought back home – and I never differentiated between synthetic and natural materials. It was just fly tying, and all my efforts at the fly tying desk never gave rise to any speculations other than those evolving around compositions, proportions, and choice of colours. IN MY CASE, the first ethical landslide in terms of tying flies happened when a Greenpeace campaign made me aware that some Greenland hunters apparently hunted and killed extremely stressed and frightened seals with clubs – and in some instances skinned them alive. Suddenly, I couldn’t tie salmon flies involving a body section of seal dubbing,
64
AS THE YEARS PASSED, more and more of my fly tying materials drew attention to themselves – either because the animals they stemmed from were threatened or because rumours suggested they were being hunted and killed inhumanely. This, for instance, was the case with my polar bear skin, my (certified) jungle cock, and not least my pieces of dried up eel skin flanks: all of them stemming from endangered species. It was also the case with the polar fox tails that I was using so frequently. They came from animals that quite often are caught using horrific scissor traps – traps that cause the animals unnecessary stress and suffering before being killed. Also, I couldn’t ignore all the many classical fly tying materials I had accumulated. They mainly consisted of exotic bird skins from the very heart of the rainforest, and I could hardly bare the thought of how they had ended up in my archives. Generally, it became painfully obvious that there was a lot I didn’t know about my fly tying materials. It worried me – and it continues to do so. For instance, I still don’t know whether or not some animals are being hunted solely for the purpose of producing fly tying materials, and if the hunting methods are questionable. I have no idea whether the production of genetically engineered hackles is ethically sound. And I have no real clue as to whether or not the