You younger (or newer) tiers just don't know how good you got it, with the quality of hackles these days. I can remember the days when it took two, sometimes three hackles from a neck to get a good dry fly. And we'd cheat by using one or two hackles too long, palmer them, then trim them a little shorter than what was needed. Then we' d palmer the last correct-sized hackle through the others to get what we thought then was a nice full collar.
I'm nowhere near as old, err, "experienced" as some on this list, but can attest that in just the last 14 or 15 years the quality of hackles has improved at an astonishing rate! When I first started (mind you, this is when I was age 13 or so) tying, all I could afford was Indian necks, which were actually graded as the genetics of today are -- and I thought I had gotten the best thing since sliced bread when receiving a indian neck with size 14's that only required TWO hackles for a dry's collar... So I guess I'm saying that if hackles improved that much in just 14 or 15 years, I can't fathom the extent to which they've improved since before then! I'm very fortunate to be around in this time frame -- of course, in another 15 years, I'll look back and hopefully think "how did I ever tie with such undeveloped materials"?
One can only hope and dream...
Tight wraps,
Pete
