Pig

[Traditionalist]

Above, is a piece of wild boar hide, showing the "wool" on the skin at the base of the guard hair. The guard hairs are long coarse and stiff, and are only really useful for things like"feelers" on prawns etc. The wool in its natural state may also make good dubbing, if it is of the right colour, and texture. The texture varies quite a lot, from fairly soft and "fluffy" to relatively coarse and wiry, depending on the animal it was taken from, and whereabouts it was taken from . The piece above came fom the back, just behind the neck, of an adult wild boar.



Above is a picture of a sample of prepared pig´s wool, kindly provided by William S. ( Bill) Bailey. Bill collects and prepares such hair most especially for salmon fly dressers looking for authentic materials. Bill is also an expert on various natural dyes and techniques, and has offered limited amounts of this material to the trade in the past.

Some more info on Bill´s work here;

http://feathersmc.com/products/Pigs%20Wool

http://feathersmc.com/products/Bill%20Bailey%27s%20Kid%20Mohair

A number of people have e-mailed me recently about pig´s wool. This is a problem, as it is very hard to obtain, and many of the patterns which used it are also more or less defunct. It was used a lot on salmon flies, on some soft hackles, and of course on a number of other flies. Unfortunately the pig´s wool used in many of the old patterns is no longer easily available. The breeds of pig which produced the wool are more or less extinct. In my efforts to obtain "original" pig´s wool, I went to considerable trouble, and did quite a bit of research.

There are many breeds of pig, and a fair number are already extinct. Working on the assumption that the old fly -dressers were looking for similar properties to the hair of Polar bears and seals, ( brightness, ease of dyeing etc), I found a couple of breeds still existent, where the hair still has these qualities.

It is quite difficult to obtain samples, but not impossible. Here is a Hungarian wool pig for instance. This stuff makes excellent dubbing. It is quite unlike sheep´s wool.

This breed of pig is probably the closest to some of the original breeds from which the wool was taken.

Analysis of the wool using various methods( courtesy of some friends of mine at the local unversity), shows that these hairs have similar qualities to seal fur and polar bear. Mainly excellent transmission of UV light, ( whether this is of any particular advantage is a moot point),and one or two other interesting properties. The hair does dye up very well indeed, if one uses the right techniques, and is colour fast.

In the absence of a source of pig´s wool, then fairly stiff mohair or young seal fur is about the best substitute.

Most modern breeds of pig have little or no hair, and what they have is pretty useless for flydressing, it is too hard and coarse. Hair bearing pigs have been more or less bred out, as the hair is a nuisance when slaughtering. Wild pigs still have hair of course, indeed quite a lot, but it is invariably a dark colour, quite hard and coarse, and though useful for some things, ( feelers on prawns, antennae on some flies),it is not dyeable to the same extent, without extensive preparation. Nor does it transmit UV light in it´s normal state. Apparently some dyed material does, but I don´t know if this is particularly germane.. Some light coloured hair may be found at various places on the coat of wild pigs, which may be suitable. See for instance the work of Bill Bailey above.

While I am convinced that most of the old salmon flies, ( for which this dubbing was used extensively), were almost a total waste of time, money, and materials, there is no denying that they caught fish, and this was not simply due to the fact that there were more fish then! If one wishes to dress historically accurate flies, then one must spend a great deal of time, ( and not a little money! ) sourcing the materials, and some will prove impossible to source anyway.

Over the years, I have experimented with lots of things, especially old wet flies, and various dye recipes. Some of the resulting flies are very much better than their modern counterparts.Hare fur is a case in point. Some of the soft hackles used on various old wet flies are also much more effective than poultry hackles, for a number of reasons.

The pig´s wool used on some old wet flies was certainly from the breeds of domestic pig which were widespread at the time. These breeds simply no longer exist in the UK, or only as isolated examples. They may exist elsewhere, but obtaining the wool is likely to prove difficult.

Lastly, although I have seen a fair number of old patterns using pig´s wool, these were often patterns where the pig´s wool was used as a substitute for something else, ( but not always, many patterns specify dyed hog´s wool or "down", )and it was not named in the original dressing. Dales farmers and other people living in remote ( at the time) regions, would be completely unable to obtain seal fur or Polar bear, and many other things, so they simply used what they had. It is most unlikely that flies dressed with pig´s wool are any more effective than those dressed with seal or mohair. One substitute which looks nice and behaves in a similar manner is hedgehog belly. ( Erinaceus europaeus ) Many thousands of these animals are now killed annually on the roads, so the belly fur is easily obtainable. The animals often have large numbers of fleas, ticks, and other pests, so care should be taken when collecting such material.

Although this was also used by a number of dressers,and was often quoted as a "necessary" dubbing material, it is only specifically named in very few privately published soft hackle patterns that I know of. I do have a few very old patterns which use it.

TL
MC