There are two distinct schools of thought when it comes to deer hair stacking. The first camp approaches their deer hair with the sort of aggressive confidence one might reserve for wrestling a particularly stubborn lawn mower into submission.
These are the folks who grab a handful of deer hair, jam it into their stacker and proceed to whack the thing against their tying bench with the enthusiasm of a carpenter with a deadline and a caffeine problem.
Then there are the finesse artists—a more contemplative breed who treat each strand of deer hair as if it were a rare violin string requiring the delicate touch of a concert virtuoso. They select their fibers with the careful consideration of a sommelier choosing wine, gently coax them into alignment through what can only be described as fiber diplomacy, and approach the entire process with the sort of reverence typically reserved for handling ancient manuscripts.
Both approaches then translate to how the deer hair is handled (muscled or finessed) on the hook. And, make no mistake about it, both produce spectacular results. This is rather like discovering that you can reach the summit of a particular mountain by either charging straight up the face like a mountain goat or by taking the scenic route and stopping to admire the view every few hundred yards. The mountain, being indifferent to your methodology, remains equally conquered. Read on learn more and figure out where you fall:
The Hair Stacking Tips and Tricks You Need
Now, before we delve into the actual mechanics of hair stacking, we must first address the matter of tools. Because if there's one thing fly tyers love more than catching fish, it's acquiring an ever-expanding arsenal of specialized implements that would make a surgeon jealous.
At the heart of any serious hair-stacking operation lies the hair stacker itself, and here I must pause to acknowledge what is perhaps the Rolls-Royce of hair stackers: the Renzetti Hair Stacker. This is a precision instrument crafted with the sort of attention to detail that suggests its creators understood that somewhere, somehow, a fly tyer's entire self-worth might one day depend on achieving perfect hair alignment at precisely 3:47 AM on a Tuesday.
The Renzetti stacker operates on the elegantly simple principle that gravity, when properly harnessed, can solve most of life's problems. You insert your deer hair tips-first into the cylinder, tap the base against a solid surface (your tying bench, preferably), and physics does the rest. The hair settles into perfect alignment as if by magic.
Equally crucial to the hair-stacking enterprise is a proper rotary vise. A rotary vise allows you to spin your fly while you work—practical, efficient, and oddly satisfying in the way that only perfectly engineered mechanical devices can be.
The Zen of Stacking Technique
For those in the Finesse camp, the actual stacking process begins long before the hair meets the stacker. It starts with the selection—pinching a small bundle of hair tips between thumb and forefinger with the gentle pressure one might use to hold a butterfly. The hair is then carefully trimmed from the hide, maintaining that delicate grip as if releasing it might cause some sort of cosmic disturbance.
The cleaning process follows: removing the underfur and shorter or sometimes broken hairs.
For these tyers, loading the stacker is all about precision.The hair goes in tips-first—and here I must emphasize that getting this backwards is the sort of mistake that can haunt a tyer for weeks. The bundle must be straight, aligned, and free of tangles.
The tapping—ah, the tapping. This is where the Musclers and the Finesse Artists truly diverge. The Musclers approach this like they're trying to crack a walnut with a sledgehammer, delivering sharp, decisive blows that send the hair shooting to the bottom of the stacker with the efficiency of a pneumatic drill. The Finesse Artists, meanwhile, tap with gentle persistence.
From here, we move on to the actual tying. For those patterns that call for spun deer hair—your bass bugs, your divers, your generally more aggressive flies—the process becomes less about finesse and more about controlled chaos. Here, you actually want the hair to flare, to spread out in a wild explosion of fibers that would horrify anyone trying to stack for wings but delights those creating buoyant, fishable bodies.
Spinning deer hair is rather like conducting a small orchestra of rebellious musicians, you provide the general direction and timing, but each individual fiber is going to interpret your instructions in its own creative way. The key is learning to work with this chaos rather than against it, guiding the mayhem into something resembling a fly rather than a craft project that's gotten slightly out of hand.
The Art of Stacking vs. The Chaos of Spinning
Now, here's where things become deliciously complicated, because "stacking" in the fly-tying world refers not only to the tool-assisted alignment of hair tips but also to an entirely different tying technique that bears the same name.
Stacking as a tying technique involves layering materials in deliberate, organized bundles to create wings, tails, or bodies with precise control over density and silhouette. Unlike the wild abandon of spinning (which we'll discuss momentarily), stacking technique requires you to think like an architect rather than an abstract artist. Each bundle of deer hair is positioned with mathematical precision, tied down with just enough thread pressure to secure it without causing unwanted flare, and built up layer by methodical layer until you achieve the desired effect.
The beauty of this technique lies in its predictability—a quality that anyone who has ever attempted to spin deer hair will appreciate with the fervor of a drowning man greeting a life preserver. With proper stacking technique, you know exactly where each fiber will end up, how much bulk you're adding with each wrap, and what the final product will look like before you've even finished. It's the difference between conducting a symphony orchestra and trying to organize a flash mob of caffeinated squirrels.
For those patterns that call for spun deer hair—your bass bugs, your divers, your generally more aggressive flies—the process becomes less about finesse and more about controlled chaos.
Spinning deer hair is rather like conducting a small orchestra of rebellious musicians—you provide the general direction and timing, but each individual fiber is going to interpret your instructions in its own creative way. The key is learning to work with this chaos rather than against it, guiding the mayhem into something resembling a fly rather than a craft project that's gotten slightly out of hand.
The Eternal Struggle
In the end, the goal remains the same: to create flies that fool fish and satisfy the peculiar human need to make beautiful, functional objects with our hands. Hair stacking is simply one tool in this ancient pursuit, albeit one that can drive you to distraction while simultaneously providing some of the most satisfying moments in the entire fly-tying experience.