How to hang, pluck and draw a partridge or pheasant

• Hang the bird for a couple of days (by the neck) in a cool place such as a garage or cold larder.
• Cut off the head with a decent pair of scissors. (Once you have got rid of this the whole procedure seems less ghoulish).
• snap the lower legs at the joints and pull out the tendons. This takes some strength.
• Cut off the wings at the joint. (you will find this in the fold between the wing and the body.)

Plucking the feathers:

It is easier to pluck a bird when it is warm. Let a bird reach room temperature before plucking, it makes an enormous difference

• Find a carrier bag (any supermarket one will do)
• Stand your carrier bag on a table, workbench, or in the sink (I use the sink) the bird will be plucked into this. Pull up the sides of the carrier bag so that you have an enclosed area in which to contain the plucked feathers.
• Put a few sheets of newspaper around your working area to catch any stray feathers.
• Hold the bird by the legs and brush the feathers on the breast and back (against the grain, so to speak) so they sit up a little. With small neat movements pluck the feathers away and down from the bird, ideally straight into the carrier bag.
  If skin comes away on the base of the feathers you are being too rough or trying to remove too many feathers at once. Experiment a little with this. You will soon get the feel of the most efficient plucking movement. I place my fingers on the skin around the plucking area.this stops the skin being plucked from the carcass along with the tips of the feathers.
• Spread the tail feathers into a fan shape and pluck these following the line of the feather.
• To remove the leg feathers, hold the body and brush the feathers smooth (with the grain) and pluck them sharply down in that direction.

The feathers are plucked with a short downwards movement, straight into the bag. It’s worth experimenting with different plucking methods to find one that suits you best. I find that some feathers are more easily removed ‘against the grain’ and some ‘with the grain’. The secret is in the short precise plucking movement. If you can get into a relaxed rhythm it’s easy.

Drawing the bird

• Remove the crop (from the head end) by gently putting a finger into the neck opening, rotating gently and pulling the crop out. If you are curious, you can open this to see what the last meal was. Remove the gullet and windpipe.
• Now stick your forefinger up the birds bum. Rotate it gently and draw out the liver and guts. We freeze the livers to use in an excellent terrine.
• Wash the bird (inside and out) and refrigerate for a couple of days before use.

If your bird smalls bad chuck it away, contained in a couple of tightly sealed carrier bags. Sometimes gun dogs will pick up a lost bird from a day or so before. This is rare but it has happened to us.

Skinning a bird:

Follow the steps for ‘How to hang, pluck and draw a partridge or pheasant’ then put your finger under the skin around the neck and loosen the skin. Hold the skin firmly and pull gently down towards the tail. The skin and feathers should come off in one piece. Once skinned, don’t forget to draw the bird (see above). Roasting is really out if you have skinned your bird but any casserole or recipe that encloses the bird will probably be successful. See our pheasant recipes, these were all cooked with skinned game and are excellent.

Initial Preparation

A rabbit should have the urine expelled from it before gutting to avoid puncturing the bladder during gutting and thus contaminating the meat. This procedure is carried out immediately on killing your rabbit and the procedures described here are executed in the field. For gutting, the rabbit should have cooled, or it will bleed. This does not affect the eating quality, but if the rabbit is to be carried in a gamebag it will soak through on to your clothing.

Removing the Urine from a Rabbit

By far the best way to remove the urine is to hold the rabbit in one hand by the chest, belly up, and rear legs hanging down. Using your free hand, take hold of the rabbit about midway down its abdomen so that your thumb is on its belly, and in a gentle stroking motion downwards express the urine from it. This procedure not only prolongs the life of game bags, but saves the risk of contaminating the meat with urine when preparing the rabbit for the dinner table.

Gutting a Rabbit

Although techniques may vary, this method is a quick, tried-and-tested means of performing a task which some may find objectionable, but which can be accomplished with minimal contact with the yucky bits. It is important that it is carried out on waste ground, or an alternative method will need to be used.

You need a knife with a sticky sharp point - a craft knife is suitable, but any small sharp pointed knife will do. Take hold of the rabbit in the left hand around the chest (belly up), and taking care not to go stabbing wildly, insert your knife just below the ribs at a shallow angle, and make an incision about three quarters of an inch long. You should be looking at going in no further than say a quarter of an inch or 6mm. Two fingers can now be inserted into the incision and it can be torn open to give you an opening about three inches long. This sounds brutal, but it is the best way to make sure that you don't contaminate the meat by puncturing the entrails with the knife.

Take the rabbit by the back feet with one hand, round the chest with the other, raising it shoulder high, and using a motion similar to emptying a bucket whose contents are stuck to the bottom of it, swiftly swing the rabbit downwards. This will remove most of the entrails, they will still be attached at front and rear, however. The part attached to the rear can easily be pulled and broken without risk of contamination, as the only thing you will encounter here are rabbit droppings, which are usually very dry and hard. The front is a different matter, it is attached to the stomach, up beneath the ribs. Take the rabbit round the ribs in the left hand and grip the stomach, and remove it, it is about the size of a golf ball and providing you didn't puncture it with your knife, it will come away cleanly leaving you with a gutted rabbit, as it would be, if you acquired it from a game dealer.

The chest cavity is normally left intact as it carries little risk of going off, thus contaminating the food. If you have managed so far, and want to finish the job, look inside the body cavity and you will see a tight membrane. This is the diaphragm which separates the thorax from the abdomen. Puncture this and the heart and lungs are easily removed by taking hold of them and pulling them out. Quite often this is unnecessary as, unless the rabbit is being cooked whole, the rib cage is often discarded due to the fact that there is very little meat on it.

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• This is for right-handed people, if you're left-handed then use your right hand to hold the rabbit.
  
• It is not the end of the world, but easier if you don't stab the stomach or puncture any of the intestines.
  
• While it is possible to control the direction in which the entrails travel, it is advisable to carry out the task alone until you become proficient.
  
• If you did puncture the stomach, or it bursts on removal, the fouling should be washed out immediately as it taints the meat.
  

The rabbit should be gutted promptly on cooling as the meat can become tainted, especially if the rabbit has been shot, as on occasion, the gut will be punctured allowing the contents to come into contact with the meat.
 

Skinning

As this part of the operation can be messy, you can elect to do it outside (weather permitting), and it should be carried out on an impervious surface such as polythene or a worktop. Do not use newspaper as the print is very difficult to remove from the meat. A plastic 'builders rubble' type bag can be used.

Lay the rabbit on its back, head towards you and on the left side of the opening that it was gutted through, start to separate the skin from the meat - it's not that dissimilar from opening a book. Work round to the other side until you have separated the meat from the skin right round.

Put your left hand under the skin and grip the rabbit. It should be quite easy using the other hand to peel off the rest of the skin.

You will find that it is still attached at the head, legs and tail. These can be removed with a pair of kitchen scissors or a sharp knife. Do be careful, as unless you remove the legs at the joint not only the knife, but the bones will also be very sharp. The head is best removed by cutting round the neck with a sharp knife, then dislocating the vertebrae with a twisting motion.

You should now wash your rabbit to remove any blood and fluff that is sticking to it, and finally dry it using kitchen paper or a cloth.