Ponderings: Processing Pheasants

Upon being invited to a ‘pheasant plucking & cleaning party’ my first thought was that if I went and did it, I might be grossed out and not want to eat the meat and even turn vegetarian. To have real integrity when it comes to being self-sufficient and having a close connection to my food source, then I needed to not only attend, but should even learn how to kill my pheasant.

I asked ‘Jay’ if he could call me when he was going to kill the pheasants so I could be there and learn how to do it. He informed me that he was breaking their necks when he picked them up because he didn’t want to drive home with 20 live pheasants in his car and that he would be hanging the pheasants for 3 days before we plucked. As I had recently taken only 6 young chickens home in a box in the van and they kept escaping at every stop, I knew why he was leery. He promised it was really easy to break their neck and that he could show me.

When we arrived at his cool garage, the pheasants hanging there were beautiful. They were male with a vivid range of colouring that was magnificent. I imagined in times past, the kitchen staff of a wealthy manor saving the tail feathers for a hat for the Mistress of the house. Hanging meat is definitely a cold weather activity and coincidently, hunting pheasants is typically allowed from about Halloween to New Years.

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I sat down to plucking with the body on my lap (it felt like a body to me) and the feathers came out pretty easily and I think that is because the bird was hung for 3 days. I felt like I needed permission to do this as this bird gave up its life, sort of, in order to become my food. But as the task master I am, I worked at pulling out the feathers as I thought about the bird giving up its life for my supper. It was odd holding the limp and cold body because it made me think of unconscious kittens in a strange way, the body was substantial yet cold and floppy so it didn’t really feel like a creature, it started to feel like a roast to me.

My mind drifted to my goal of self-sufficiency and then to using all of the body parts and using the feathers seemed easy. Fishermen could use the feathers for fly fishing lures. I am not sure if I would use the feet for anything, the only thing that came to mind was some sort of creepy key chain or voodoo style decorations. I wouldn’t even feed the head to dogs as the bones are hollow and can splinter. There must be some sort of use for the heads and feet that doesn’t involve drinking eyeballs or boiling brains which I am sure is considered a delicacy by some.
I made a few tears in the skin from vigorous plucking, but it was mostly intact. My husband’s bird had quite a few big tears in it so Jay taught my husband how to skin it. By the time most of my bird’s feathers were off, it resembled a store bought chicken much more except the meat was darker and looked reddish-pink and the tiny fat pockets seen through the translucent skin was almost yellow.
I was a bit creeped out at the thought of just pulling the head off. Jay demonstrated and held the head and body almost under his chin to take advantage of his upper body strength. I started to hold it that way too, although anticipated the head popping off and blood squirting everywhere. The blood was thick and coagulated so it would not have done that, but I was feeling squeamish. I held the neck in front of my belly and pulled really hard. It took quite a bit of strength and did come off eventually, but I didn’t actually see anything because I had my eyes closed. The larynx was there and Jay said that apparently you can blow through the larynx and make it cluck, some people do the same thing to cow larynxes and make them ‘moo’. That sounded like gross games bored teenage farm boys play.
I cut the wings tips off as taking the feathers out of the wing tips was hard to do and would require pliers; the wing tips looked like little angel wings. Discarded body parts were fluctuating from gross to angelic. Scrapping the inside of the cavity to separate the innards from the ribs was easy to do as I imagined the inside of a turkey carcass.
As a city slicker and even after reading books on chickens, I didn’t realize that the ‘vent’ was not only the hole that the eggs came out, but that it is the only ‘bottom’ hole and that the poop comes out of it too. Anyway, Jay cut above the vent, making sure he did not pierce the bowels. I then had to scoop out all the guts, trying to do it all in one scoop, bringing the stuff from the front of the cavity to the back. I pushed the guts toward the back of the bird and mistakenly started pushing poo out the vent. As I got the guts out, I saw the full intestines and said they looked so smooth like little sausages, Jay commented that they are cute little poo sausages. Isn’t it odd how many food items resemble body parts? I accidentally pierced the guts by pulling them or poking them and the smell of 3 day old dead poo filled the air; puncturing that in a room full of other people is like letting out the worst cabbage garlic whiskey fart. At least it was my first time so everyone was forgiving.
I looked inside and saw that there was something still stuck to the ribs. It was bright red like sweet and sour chicken balls, so I thought it might be the lungs, sure enough, it was. There was no danger of piercing anything smelly so I dug right in there. I was worried that puncturing the guts might leave a scent on my hands like lingering onion-it didn’t.
All in all it was a good experience, I ended up with two pheasants for the freezer, a bag of feathers for the hen house, and another feeling of accomplishment and the confidence that I can take care of myself and my family; I just need to figure out how to get my hands on a bird.