Field Dressing Game: Pheasant Whole Bird

Description

Become a Patron:

https://www.patreon.com/MCQBushcraft

Bushcraft Basics Blog - http://www.mcqbushcraft.co.uk/bushcraft-basics/

Amazon Store:

UK Store - http://astore.amazon.co.uk/mcqbushcraft-21

US Store - http://astore.amazon.com/mcq-20

Merchandise:

T-Shirts - http://mcqbushcraft.spreadshirt.co.uk/

Connect On My Website - http://www.MCQBushcraft.co.uk

Connect On Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/MCQBushcraft

Connect On Instagram - http://www.instagram.com/mcqbushcraft1

Connect On Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/MCQBushcraft

Tags: woodland,forest,mountains,river,lake,tinder,Survival,Bushcraft,survivor,knife,knives,valley,axe,camping,tent,footwear,hunting,fishing,backpack,clothing,boots,primitive,nature,shelter,shooting,shotgun,rifle,rucksack,flashlight,torch,craft,plants,trees,education,wilderness,family,hobbies,fun,animals,game

Video Transcription

hi there guys it's been quite an active weekend of hunting you probably hear the pheasants calling behind me there's loads of him around pheasant seasons well in play when I got this one this morning as well as one yesterday with a 410 this one was taken out with the air rifle it was actually in the compost in the back garden sitting there quite proudly and I got it with an air rifle with a dianna 280 carbine 177 and a Bisley Magnum palette for those of you who are interested so it was a good clean shot straight through the head and it was outright cold so I thought I'd do a video on how to prepare a pheasant or all my methods so I should say on how I prepare pheasant in the field there's some really easy ways out there preparing a pheasant and one of the easiest ways of doing is just standing on the wings and pulling on the feet you just tear the bird in half you end up with a brass meat on one side and the leg part of the back in the other and if you don't mind the bird in two halves when you prepare it we know you're just after the breast meat then there really isn't any other easier way of doing it just tearing it in half like that it's just a great way to prepare the bird and obviously you end up with some wing meat as well which is good too and but for me I usually prepare the bird as a whole I tend to cook them over a fire when I make those and I tend to practice a lot of different techniques in an outdoor setting because that's why I like to do these things when I'm outdoors I usually stick roast pheasant over a fire and then cut the meat off when it's cooked or just eat straight off the bone it's a nice way of doing it and there's generally concerned about the meat drying out because you've skinned it or you're cooking over an open fire you know I had one like it yesterday with a friends when we went out hunting and it was really delicious and the meat is very moist very succulent and it's a great way of doing it if you are right you can mix it with edibles and you know and rice and do various things with it outdoors and it is really good so that's just my method of preparing pheasant I do it as a whole and yeah and I'll show you how I do it now so first things first on the bird you can this one here still got bit rigor mortis it's a nice big bird actually bit stiff but yeah it's a good bird good mail nice and big which is what we want really more for the eating so first of all I tend to just skin the bird as opposed to pluck it and you can do that just by pulling on the feathers and the skin will just begin to come off and reveal the meat underneath because the skin is very fragile on pheasants you can see it's just coming off really easily they need to make a mess you can see the meat they're very easy to see off the back as well don't worry about any muscle dirt on the ground often just wash them in a river before I cut them or if you're going to take them home you'll wash them again so it really isn't a big big deal or nothing to worry about you can see very easy to remove all the skin and feathers you just a simple job of pulling and you'll see the meat start to reveal itself under the skin and it comes off very easily so you're left with some of the tougher feathers now sometimes I use a knife to assist me at this so with the tail is usually a bit of meat attached to it you can just just take your knife and pop it through D be careful with your blade around that area because the abdomen is that if there's some poo coming out you don't really want to get that on your blade so that's why it's a good idea to just bend it up away from the abdomen and chop through so these feathers on the on the wing there we try and pull them all at once they're not going to come out if you put a few at a time they come out very easily

it's a bit of a bleak day today actually Lighting's alright on this but sure I find that when I get home again just break that usually give it a twist you can zip your knife through okay say the birds almost there I'm going to use my knife to just assist me and I always quite liked to use battening as a technique and dressing anything just cuz I find it gives me a bit more control so I'm going to remove the head so we're almost there with this bird we've cut the head off we've cut the feet off the wings are tidy all the feathers are gone and we've got plenty of meat there to eat and recover off of the bird obviously now we need to gut the bird and it's quite simple to do that I usually push the legs apart just like that you can see where the breast ends because it's quite clear you can see a line all the way up there I usually just run my knife down that line

just like that and then we can get our fingers in and get the gut sight just generally

are able to just pull it all right just in one hit and I'll leave that there cuz we're gonna use some of that in a second so these are the guts unit what lays the flies can have those so that's the majority of the bird cleaned up and there's a few things I've kept there just pulled the guts I cleaned around the abdomen

obviously I'll wash this even further and the preparation mode may go on a bit more for you if you want it to you might want to cut the meat off or cook it and then cut the meat off and put it on a dish and put it with something else is a number of things you can do with it and it doesn't obviously end here this is just dressing the bird ready for the next step so we've got the guts out I've left the heart in all the meat I was right there we've got the liver here it's always good to have a look at the liver tells you a lot about the animal that's quite a healthy liver I'm going to put that back in because that's you know how I'm going to carry it home obviously um obviously I've had it on Moss and there are flies buzzing around everywhere so you want to give it a wash but another part of the birds you might want to use is the gizzard and the gizzard is going to be full of grit and various other things that you want to clean out so I tend to cut the gizzard open

and then pull the gives it in half like that it's gonna be full of horrible stuff but what you can do once you've got it open what let's just tear off this part like you do with woodpigeon it holds all the grit and then you're left with the muscle on the outside that obviously constricts the sack that's going to need to be cleaned off as well so now we've got the bird prepared everything externally and internally is right here in front of me and it's what I want to eat I may pick around it a bit more like I may clean up around the neck and around the crop of the bird around the bum of the bird you know tidy up a bit before I wash it just make sure that there's no bits and bobs hanging around that I don't want then I'll wash it in a river or I'll wash it in the sink at home and clean it up and then it can be put in the freezer or stored you can do whatever you want with it from after you know after that point it really is you know just meat and you can use it how you want it I had some yesterday over the campfire just like this a stick straight through and rotate it every every 15 minutes me and a friend of mine when I was shooting you know got some pheasants and it was great just to have them over a campfire they don't dry out at all even with the skin off you know roasted slowly they really are quite succulent and pretty delicious but I'm going to get this bagged up anyway because the Flies are obviously moving in but this is just my method on preparing a pheasant I quite like preparing the bird as a whole and keeping the internals that I want to eat this will probably go into a courier if I'm honest with you but thanks for watching and I hope you've enjoyed the vid and I hope it's useful and you know hopefully I'll see you in the next vid