Down and Dirty : Turning Goose Feathers Into Pillows Is a Cushy, but Messy, Occupation

As Dick Eastman walked slowly along the edge of the room he was engulfed in goose feathers billowing all around him.

Feathers clung to his clothes, to his face and hair.

He was in a 20-by-30-foot room filled with feathers and down piled seven feet high. The feathers were plucked from more than 22,500 wild geese shot by hunters in the Tule Lake area during a three-month hunting season that ended in January.

Eastman and his wife, Trudy, own and operate the only wildfowl pillow and comforter company in America. Their products are stuffed with feathers and down from wild geese.

The Eastmans bought Mallard, a wild duck and goose processing plant in this small agricultural center four miles south of the Oregon border, in 1973. The plant in Tulelake has been in operation 50 years. (The town is one word, the lake two words.)

$2 to $4 Per Bird

“It was started out of need,” Eastman said. “Hunters come by the thousands to this northeast corner of California to shoot duck and geese during the 90-day October to January season each year.

“Hunters have no easy way to remove the feathers and prepare the birds for the long trip home. Over the years several different processing plants were established but the Mallard is the only one left in Tulelake.”

During the peak of the hunting season as many as 25 people are employed at the processing plant. Hunters are charged $2 to $4 per bird to have feathers plucked, ducks and geese gutted, frozen and packaged.

Trudy Eastman, a plant breeder at University of California, Davis, before moving to Tulelake, wanted to open a pillow and comforter company ever since she and her husband bought Mallard 15 years ago.

“We sold feathers and down (the soft feathers on the bird’s underside) to a large feather company. But there wasn’t a feather company anywhere in the United States specializing in wildfowl pillows and comforters. So, nine years ago we decided to start our own,” she explained.

Each pillow and comforter made by the Tulegoose Pillow Co. is marked with a tag noting that the feathers and down or down alone comes from wildfowl. The 10,000th tag was used late last year.

About 75% of the pillows and comforters are sold to hunters and others at the small Tulegoose plant in Tulelake. The rest are sold by mail order or in Klamath Falls, Ore., at the Tulegoose Pillow Co. retail outlet open two months each year during the Christmas season.

Annual sales for Mallard and Tulegoose Pillow Co., said Eastman, average between $90,000 and $100,000--with 60% to 70% from the pillow company, the rest from the processing plant.

Purchase From Hunting Clubs

Trudy Eastman and three local women make the pillows and comforters during a three-month period each year. The pillows range in price from $25 to $350, the comforters from $200 to $600, depending upon size and percentage of feathers to down.

Feathers and down harvested by the Eastmans from geese taken by Tule Lake hunters have varied from a season low of 1,200 pounds to a high of 1,800 pounds. Down represents about 20% of the total feathers on the goose. The Eastmans also purchase wildfowl feathers and down from 10 California hunting clubs.

The goose feathers for pillows and comforters come from Canada geese, white front speckled belly geese, snow geese and Ross geese. Dick Eastman said it takes 40 to 54 geese to provide enough down for a king-size comforter; a 10-pound Canada goose, for example, has about six ounces of feathers, 20% of which is down.