Left: Broken-hair tips. Right: Natural-hair tips

After these attributes, matching the hair to the purpose will be important. Today's dying techniques will allow you to accurately imitate most food forms. Dyed over natural hair will give a subdued effect on the color. Dyed over white hair will give a true color. Natural hair off of the hide doesn't have even tips. On the animal, this acts like a shingles on a house roof. It helps shed water and makes them more camouflage. When we tie a fly, we want even tips on the hair. This is for us not the fish. Humans like neat looking flies. This is accomplished by dropping the tips of the hair into a hair evener. Gravity and inertia align the tips. Natural hair has underfur, which insulates the animal, but will make it hard to even. Clean this out with your fingers or a comb. When you are cleaning out this underfur, you may feel like you are wasting material, but your are saving yourself a headache.

Hair comes in many textures, which will create different looks on a fly. I will list some of the standard hairs, their uses and texture. I will start with the least hollow hair and move to the most hollow hair.

The more hollow a hair, the easier it is to spin or flare. Hollow hair is like a plastic straw, and solid hair is like a pencil. If you push down on the straw, the ends will pop up and if you push down on the pencil nothing happens.

Flaring hair is when you hold the hair in place as you flare it, and spinning hair is letting it roll as you flare it. Flaring is used for placement, and spinning is used to cover the hook quickly and evenly. Less hollow hair is more durable and will make a better tail on a fly. I have included a photo with a variety of hairs on a hook. These were tied on with the same amount of thread pressure. The angle of the hair changes as it becomes more hollow. Natural hair will vary from animal to animal. There is sometimes an overlap in hair use.

Left: Calf body hair. Right: Calf tail hair.

Calf Hair. Calf-tail and calf-body hair are used extensively on dry flies. Both are a fine non-hollow hair. Calf-tail fibers are from 3/4" to 2" long and have a crinkle to them. Calf tail is shorter and straight. It is easier to even than the tail. Calf tail is used for wings on Trudes and parachutes. It is also excellent for wings on bonefish flies and streamers. The crinkle in it makes a wing look full with less material. Calf body is used on Wulffs and parachutes.

One trick for cleaning up calf tails is to brush them with a wire dog brush. This will straighten and clean up the fibers. I picked this up from Jimmy Nix. Sold in white and dyed colors.

Hair left to right: elk, moose body, light elk, dark elk, deer, deer belly, caribou, antelope.

Elk Mane. This is the long hair from the neck of a bull elk. It is fairly fine and a good material for dry-fly tails. It can also be wrapped as a body. See the quill-body section. Sold in natural brown.

Moose Body. This hair is used for a tail on many hairwing dry flies. It is a medium-thickness hair and is fairly stiff. It can also be used as antennae. Sold in natural black and bleached.

Bull Elk. This is sold as light elk. It is a medium fine to medium thickness hair. It is used on numerous dry flies. It is used as a wing on an Elk Hair Caddis and as the wing and tail on a blonde Wulff. It is also a good parachute wing. I prefer it over deer for small Compara-duns. Elk is more hollow at the tips and easier to tie in without bulk. Bull elk is good for extended bodies too. It is the most durable of the "hollow" hairs. Sold in a natural sand with gray butts and dyed over colors.

Cow Elk. This is sold as dark elk. It is medium to medium coarse in diameter. It has sand tips with a gray color through the rest of the fiber. It is used as dry-fly wings. Some pieces will flare and it is sold as bass hair. Elk hair is more difficult to flare than deer, but it is more durable, especially for deer on Humpys and bullet-head dries. Sold in natural gray, bleached or dyed over bleached.

Deer. Northern climate deer-body hair is the most popular hair for spinning. Muddlers, hoppers and bass bugs are tied out of deer. You can get almost any deer-body hair to flare at its base, but as you move up the hair, it will get finer and less hollow. This will happen as the hair changes in color from the gray of the butts to the tan or brown of the tips. You won't be able to flare the hair in this fine section.

When selecting hair for flies with a collar (muddlers), make sure the hollow section of the hair lets you tie the length of collar you desire. With the wrong hair, you might have to tie a #6 collar on a #10 fly. On bass bugs where I don't need the tips of the hair, I cut them off. This helps prevent the tips from catching on previous clumps while it is spinning. Both whitetail and mule deer can be used for flaring though I would give a slight edge to whitetail. Look for hair with the least amount of underfur possible. Natural and dyed colors are available.

Deer Belly. This is the white belly hair from a whitetail deer. This is my favorite for hair bugs. It is a coarse hair that flares very well. The great thing about it is that is hard to find a bad piece of it. Sold in white and vibrant dyed over white colors.

Caribou and Reindeer. These very similar animals have a good medium diameter hair that is very easy to flare. It can be flared with light thread. This makes it perfect for flies such as Irresistibles. It doesn't have good tips on the hair, so it isn't a good choice for flies with a collar.

Pronghorn Antelope. This is the easiest hair to flare. If you look at it wrong, it will stick up. I recommend it for tiers who are learning to flare hair. The tips are not perfect but they are good enough to use as a collar on a fly. This hair is has a coarse diameter all the way to the tips.