First Time Feather Preserving

When I went out for my spring turkey this past season on the opening day, I didn’t have realistic hopes of bringing one home. However, I was lucky to take a great a bird out of the woods that day! I got the turkey home, did all the cleaning, plucking, and set aside the wings, fan, feet and beard of course. I had never preserved anything before except by cooking or freezing it, so I did some quick research. I definitely made some rookie mistakes that I won’t be repeating which we I’ll get into.
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I was able to nicely spread the wings and fan on some foam board, using straight pins to hold all the feathers in a nice and evenly spread position. Then, I basically emptied my pantry of all the salt and just caked it onto all the exposed flesh where everything connected to the bird, then set it in my garage. Rookie mistake right here, leaving the feathers where flies had access to them. I thought that the salt would detour them but instead I found my feathers crawling with maggots a few days later. I was then stuck putting the feathers out in the elements for the rest of the curing process so that my house didn’t become home to a million flying pests. I re-salted them and disposed of the maggots a few times, but it took weeks and weeks for the bugs to finish their work. Luckily they only cared about the meaty parts and after some disgusting visits to make sure nothing was bothering the feathers, which were now kept outside but under cover from the rain, they had ate everything left them off.
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Next time, I’m taking my dad’s advice (which came too late) and getting borax and loading up the exposed flesh much more then I had with just the salt to help seal it better. I will also keep them wrapped inside some old mosquito netting I have in my basement, away from access to flies!