Golden pheasant male WikiMedia
When you start tying flies, almost no matter what kind, a golden pheasant skin is usually one of the first materials you should buy. It's often included in starter's kits, and if not, it's an inexpensive and widely available material.
The GP as it's often called by fly-tyers is popular for a good reason: like most pheasants it contains a broad specter of different shapes and colors of feathers. It might only be the pure dry fly tyer that won't see the GP as an obvious material to have. Salmon flies, seatrout flies, steelhead flies, saltwater flies, bass flies, flies for panfish, nymphs. You will find many patterns using GP feathers and if you improvise flies yourself, GP feathers can often find a place in new patterns.
The golden pheasant (Chrysolophus pictus) is one of those species that has been spread to many places other than its original realm. The species is originally from western China, but has been exported to many other places and is found both in the wild and in many farms all over the world.
Emerald Gem - Major Traherne\'s Emerald Gem uses GP crest as the only material in the wing
Tipperty Witchet - This Traherne fly uses GP crest for the wing and tippet feathers for the body
Golden pheasant is a very common material, which is usually for sale in any flyshop that carries fly-tying materials. It's also very inexpensive. There's a reason for this: most of the skins are really lousy! For some reason the average quality of the skins from this highly acclaimed bird are dirty, messy and smelly! Buying the cheap stuff is not a catastrophe. The lousy skins still contain hundreds of useful feathers, and with a bit of cleaning both dust and smell can be removed.
In most cases you will also be buying a body skin missing both the crest,tippet and the tail, and in some cases even the wings. The crest, tippet and tail are usually sold separately. You can get better skins by looking for "farmed" birds. Most of the birds are farmed as it is, but for some reason the designation "farmed" has been put on some skins that are a bit higher in the grade than the average.
Sometimes you can also find whole skins that are beautifully prepared with all the parts intact and on the skin. These are occasionally on sale on eBay or elsewhere online, put up by farmers who do a very fine job of skinning and preparing the feathers.
Dyed crests
You will also see dyed skins now and then. Black, purple and red are the most common colors and those that will work best on the already colorful feathers. Of course other colors can be used, but are rarely seen. Although the results can be quite unpredictable, it might be worth trying if you dye materials yourself. After all the skins are inexpensive, and experimenting won't cost you much.
The male live bird is a real beauty, and it's his feathers we refer to when talking about Golden Pheasant.
The female is - as is often the case with the pheasants - not quite as impressive and doesn't at all have the bright colors of the male. A female pheasant skin still holds a lot of very useful feathers, but it's just a lot less gaudy and colorful.