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Feathers ... will any old feather do ?

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Hillbilly:
Almost any good sized feather will work, but some may work well in one fletching style and not another. I think that in the past, raptor feathers like hawk and eagle were often used not only for their physical properties, but also for good medicine-feathers from a predatory bird would just seem to impart a little more killing power to an arrow than feathers from a chicken or some such.

Tom Leemans:
I would say that the real test would be when they get wet. Other than that, if it flies good, use it!

JackCrafty:
In the accounts I've read about ancient fletching, there was usually a preference for a certain type of feather for a certain type of arrow.  War arrows always had the strongest and most durable feathers...for obvious reasons.  Also, the ancient fletcher was more superstitious than his modern counterpart and probably used the feathers that were considered "good luck" in preference to all others.

That said, in a time when you plucked your own birds before you ate them, there were plenty of feathers at hand.  Domesticated birds probably provided most of the fletching....unless there was a trade network in place for raptor feathers.

JW_Halverson:
There is a Sioux arrow at the Museum of the Fur Trade in Chadron Nebraska that is fletched with what I believe is a goose wing feather, then a yellow shafted flicker wing feather, and the third feather is the bright blue secondary wing feather from a mallard duck.  Yup, they were very careful with what feathers they used, only bird feathers would do, never any horsefeathers.  That arrow looks to be a hunting arrow with the steel trade point on it and I do not believe it was a ceremonial arrow since it was not much decorated otherwise and it is pretty utilitarian looking other than the whatcha-got-stew of fletching.

I'd like to do a survey of the fletchings in the Grayson Collection in Missouri and break it down to species and then further down into primary wing feathers vs secondary vs tail feathers. 

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