I tie my rabbit wing in at the head only, yes i still add the feather tail. I cut the rabbit strip so that it extends barely past the hook length making the tail still visible. Like i said i replace the deer hair with rabbit but i try to keep the same proportions.
If you tie the rabbit in at the tail AND head you lose all the movement that a free standing wing gives you and instead have a flickering tail.
The more you tie the more you will adapt your own patterns, variations of current patterns, tiny yet subtle changes to already good patterns.........etc.
for example how i add orange into my flies for the Nicomen Slough. They like orange in there but not always and sometimes its a little bit and other times its the entire fly, other times its copper/orange. These are the small subtle changes you learn over years of fishing the same areas and what slight things work while others dont.
then the next hardest part is figuring out the better areas, the learning never ends
If i can find some time and remember perhaps i can toss up a few pics