The Canada geese are molting early this year. If it’s not legal for you to pick up feathers, just claim you got them from a hunter. South of MN, the molt might be long over, but check out local parks. The feathers don’t last long, as they are nearly always found on grassy lawn and get mowed over quickly.

Once you have the feathers in hand, take a sharp knife and split the quill. I go from the center of the feather to the back and then from the center to the front. I also, as shown here, often just go from the back to the front. There’s a depression that runs up the center of the quill for your knife blade to follow. An Opinel is a great knife for the job due to the thin blade. Many SAK blades are thin too, as are Exacto knives.

Take the widest side and select the nicest 5” section and snip it out with a wire snips like the one shown at the lower right in this photo. Next, take your knife and shave down the quill as much as possible. You can finish smoothing things out with an emery board. The more you can shave it down, the better it will glue to the shaft. Each fletch will be as wide as those found on flu flus, so for regular deer hunting arrows, you’ll have to take a sharp scissors and trim them narrower. You can often get a fletch out of the narrow side of a feather too. The primary feather shown here has not yet been split. Its narrow side is too narrow to make fletching. Just how many fletchings you can get out of one side of a feather depends on how long the feather is, any damage you must avoid, and on how long of a fletch you want. Consider 5”, as you can always cut them shorter and longer isn’t necessary.

Place your fletches in bags for right wing and left. Look at this photo of a turkey feather to see how to hold it in your hand to determine left or right wing. See how the base curves to the left? That’s a left wing feather.

Always store your feathers and completed fletchings in zip-lock bags. This keeps them safe from bugs and cats for that matter. You’ll need a 2 gallon bag due to the length of primaries on both geese and wild turkeys.

Earlier, we went over harvesting shoots and turning them into completed shafts. I hope this information allows you to harvest and process feathers for use on the shafts. I believe early hunters harvested shoots in the spring and built shafting. After completing that job, they began to collect molted feathers and went to work on them. It was just too convenient to pass up.

Joe

Here's what they look like when they're slimmed down a bit.

Joe

Cool Joe. I just ran out of turkey feathers. I'll have to go down to the ol Mississippi River and look. JF

Nice.

Had a bamboo arrow with goose feathers in my quiver tonight at the indoor.

Still flies well after about 5 years.

Good stuff Frisky.

Great stuff Joe. Thanks.

Nice Joe. Great5 fletch and arrows. You're cat looks like he has a bigfoot walking to the left on him (if you use your imagination a bit, or indulge in the 'nip.. ) LOL!

LOL on the cat markings! Yes, the old Mississippi River would be a great place to find the birds and the molted feathers. City parks are huge though, if the birds are nesting there.

Joe

Today, I went out and nearly doubled my goose feather supply. The birds molt over a period of 2 to 4 days around here. So, it's important to go out more than once if you find feathers. The birds were taking life easy in the heat, so I left them alone and went back later when they had moved off.

Joe

Thanks for the heads-up. The way I view geese in these parts, I will come equipped with ziplock bags a rake and running shoes. We call em Sky Carp.

You might want to wear plastic bags over those running shoes, as goose poop will be everywhere!

Joe

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