A piece of natural deer hair. A piece of light elk hair. A piece of moose body hair. Hackle-here is another place one could invest hundreds of dollars quickly and foolishly. Hackle can be bought by capes, saddles or in packages.
Capes can be domestic or imported.
Packaged dry fly hackle is very expensive and should be bought only by experienced tyers who need just a few hackles of a particular size and color. If you intend to tie only wet flies or nymphs - buy hen necks of the appropriate color. For streamers, buy packaged saddle hackles of the desired color. Again, if you are starting off just doing 1 or 2 fly patterns, buy the hackle you need for that job only. Mallard wing pair - from which you can pluck matched wing pairs.