Picked a good pheasant yesterday

[rayo]

As usual after a days beating we always get to take a brace of birds  I hit Lucky picking this one no damage to the breast meat 

[snarepeg]

Hens anytime.😊

[London Best]

2 hours ago, snarepeg said:

Hens anytime.😊

Hens every time!

[Scully]

Flew into a tree? 🙂

[marsh man]

2 hours ago, London Best said:

Hens every time!

Not sure if that is correct LB, maybe some of the time but not all of the time , would you say an ole hen bird is better than a young coxk bird , I pick a brace out with short spurs , both wings and legs in good order with no damage shown , hard frosty ground can make a difference with bruising, along with hanging them up for to long in mild conditions , they used to say a week in October , two weeks in November then as long as you like in December onwards , when this was first told the Winters must had been a lot colder then than it is now , unless it is freezing I find about a week is plenty long enough .   MM

[PeterHenry]

Those look perfect - what are you going to make with them?

I've been going through a phase of pheasant schnitzels / cutlets recently

[London Best]

11 hours ago, marsh man said:

Not sure if that is correct LB, maybe some of the time but not all of the time , would you say an ole hen bird is better than a young coxk bird , I pick a brace out with short spurs , both wings and legs in good order with no damage shown , hard frosty ground can make a difference with bruising, along with hanging them up for to long in mild conditions , they used to say a week in October , two weeks in November then as long as you like in December onwards , when this was first told the Winters must had been a lot colder then than it is now , unless it is freezing I find about a week is plenty long enough .   MM

You are right in what you say that a young (very young!) cock can eat better than a really old hen. 
But I rarely have the chance to obtain any pheasants before mid November  and by then I think the “young cocks” are not so good.  
Hens are fairly reliable through the season I find, but if you get a last year’s bird of any sex it is only good for the stewpot. 
These days I no longer hang my game for very long. We don’t really like the ‘well hung’ flavour. Partridges I generally prep the next day or day after. Pheasants I usually allow two days, and I don’t  leave even a cock bird a week even if it is hanging in the chiller. 
Also, I think pheasants don’t keep so well in the freezer as partridges, and certainly not as long as duck or venison.

[Fil]

11 hours ago, PeterHenry said:

Those look perfect - what are you going to make with them?

I've been going through a phase of pheasant schnitzels / cutlets recently

That looks amazing! I must give it a go.

[Scully]

11 hours ago, PeterHenry said:

Those look perfect - what are you going to make with them?

I've been going through a phase of pheasant schnitzels / cutlets recently

Looks fab’! There’s a bloke in another syndicate I beat and sometimes shoot on as a guest who curries pheasant and brings them in wraps on shoot days. Scrumptious! 

[PeterHenry]

5 hours ago, Fil said:

That looks amazing! I must give it a go.

Easiest thing in the world -

Remove the mini fillet, bash the pheasant breast / mini fillet with a tenderiser / mallet and then dredge them with seasoned flour. Dip in beaten egg, then coat in seasoned and finely ground dry bread crumbs. Fry in a good amount of oil untill each side is golden - makeing sure to move them gently a little from time to time so that they don't stick, but not so often that the breadcrumbs start to come off.

Remove from pan and pat each side with kitchen paper to remove excess oil - garnish with chopped parsley and a slice of lemon.

4 hours ago, Scully said:

Looks fab’! There’s a bloke in another syndicate I beat and sometimes shoot on as a guest who curries pheasant and brings them in wraps on shoot days. Scrumptious! 

👍 lots of pheasant curry eaten in my house - I'd go as far as saying it's about my favourite thing to make a curry with. 

[Scully]

30 minutes ago, PeterHenry said:

 

👍 lots of pheasant curry eaten in my house - I'd go as far as saying it's about my favourite thing to make a curry with. 

Indeed. Without exception ( not including the bits the ferret gets ) all pheasant in this house is curried. 

[PeterHenry]

11 minutes ago, Scully said:

Indeed. Without exception ( not including the bits the ferret gets ) all pheasant in this house is curried. 

👍

[London Best]

Pheasant certainly makes a good curry. 
Or a casserole. 
Or goujons. 
Or roast. 
I think the best of the lot is a roast pheasant eaten cold the next day with bread sauce. 
Actually, my favourite is whatever way it is being served on that day!

[JohnfromUK]

7 hours ago, London Best said:

I think pheasants don’t keep so well in the freezer as partridges, and certainly not as long as duck or venison.

If you breast out the game, they all keep MUCH better in the freezer if you vac pac them.

[marsh man]

7 hours ago, London Best said:

You are right in what you say that a young (very young!) cock can eat better than a really old hen. 
But I rarely have the chance to obtain any pheasants before mid November  and by then I think the “young cocks” are not so good.  
Hens are fairly reliable through the season I find, but if you get a last year’s bird of any sex it is only good for the stewpot. 
These days I no longer hang my game for very long. We don’t really like the ‘well hung’ flavour. Partridges I generally prep the next day or day after. Pheasants I usually allow two days, and I don’t  leave even a cock bird a week even if it is hanging in the chiller. 
Also, I think pheasants don’t keep so well in the freezer as partridges, and certainly not as long as duck or venison.

I wonder how many Pheasants , or any game / fowl come to that are eaten by sportsmen because that is the right thing to do rather than for the taste alone , in this hectic world we live in not everyone have got the time to pluck a brace of pheasants and if you have got the time then how many of the household like eating shot game , my wife never liked duck/game neither did my daughter or the grand kids , so whatever I done it was for me only , very often I would have much more hanging up in my shed or garage than I could handle and the stuff that go in the freezer often get left for a while as this time of the year you get a constant flow of stuff come your way , more so now the demand is low , plenty of shoots around here tell the helpers to help themselves to whatever they want as non end up at the dealers , in the last six days I had a brace from last Saturday , a Mallard I shot Wednesday night and another brace of long tails today , I will use one up tomorrow for Saturdays night tea and the rest up before our next shoot in two weeks time , I try and avoid putting duck in the freezer as they don't pluck very well once they are thawed out and I always thought that Mallard were pretty reliable when it came to eating them , both hot or cold they were ideal , that was until I brought home the first Mallard I ate this season , a really fat Drake in perfect condition with hardly a mark on it , done it in White wine sauce for most of the afternoon and it ended up as one of , if not the toughest duck I had ever eaten , it was tough as old boots and even the dog had to chew it , and if a seasoned Labrador do that then it must be tough 

[Fil]

2 minutes ago, JohnfromUK said:

If you breast out the game, they all keep MUCH better in the freezer if you vac pac them.

I bought one. They are brilliant.

[PeterHenry]

48 minutes ago, marsh man said:

I wonder how many Pheasants , or any game / fowl come to that are eaten by sportsmen because that is the right thing to do rather than for the taste alone , in this hectic world we live in not everyone have got the time to pluck a brace of pheasants and if you have got the time then how many of the household like eating shot game , my wife never liked duck/game neither did my daughter or the grand kids , so whatever I done it was for me only , very often I would have much more hanging up in my shed or garage than I could handle and the stuff that go in the freezer often get left for a while as this time of the year you get a constant flow of stuff come your way , more so now the demand is low , plenty of shoots around here tell the helpers to help themselves to whatever they want as non end up at the dealers , in the last six days I had a brace from last Saturday , a Mallard I shot Wednesday night and another brace of long tails today , I will use one up tomorrow for Saturdays night tea and the rest up before our next shoot in two weeks time , I try and avoid putting duck in the freezer as they don't pluck very well once they are thawed out and I always thought that Mallard were pretty reliable when it came to eating them , both hot or cold they were ideal , that was until I brought home the first Mallard I ate this season , a really fat Drake in perfect condition with hardly a mark on it , done it in White wine sauce for most of the afternoon and it ended up as one of , if not the toughest duck I had ever eaten , it was tough as old boots and even the dog had to chew it , and if a seasoned Labrador do that then it must be tough 

I'm firmly of the belief that pheasant tastes better than chicken, and venison is as good as or better than beef. I'm also a big fan of wildfowl - although it's a little harder to cook as opposed to the farmed variety. 

I do have a dry plucking machine though - which speeds things up

[marsh man]

37 minutes ago, PeterHenry said:

I'm firmly of the belief that pheasant tastes better than chicken, and venison is as good as or better than beef. I'm also a big fan of wildfowl - although it's a little harder to cook as opposed to the farmed variety. 

I do have a dry plucking machine though - which speeds things up

I agree with you entirely about a Pheasant having more taste than ( most ) Chicken's , I had Chicken pre cooked breasts from Waitrose during the last week and I am glad I didn't pay full price as they were very near tasteless , having said that , how many shot Pheasants will you have on the Christmas Day table at dinnertime ? very , very few in comparison of the traditional Christmas fare , I have the advantage of picking a decent brace out at the end of a shoot day, but the dealer pay for 99% of the bag so whatever he buy then he have to sell and you cannot disguise the bird have been shot so not every house wife want to cook a bird that have dark patches of blood on the breast or on the body and then if they were unlucky to get an ole age pensioner then I very much doubt they will try another one , then people wonder why there is very little demand from todays younger generation and many older ones come to that .  MM  

[PeterHenry]

1 hour ago, marsh man said:

I agree with you entirely about a Pheasant having more taste than ( most ) Chicken's , I had Chicken pre cooked breasts from Waitrose during the last week and I am glad I didn't pay full price as they were very near tasteless , having said that , how many shot Pheasants will you have on the Christmas Day table at dinnertime ? very , very few in comparison of the traditional Christmas fare , I have the advantage of picking a decent brace out at the end of a shoot day, but the dealer pay for 99% of the bag so whatever he buy then he have to sell and you cannot disguise the bird have been shot so not every house wife want to cook a bird that have dark patches of blood on the breast or on the body and then if they were unlucky to get an ole age pensioner then I very much doubt they will try another one , then people wonder why there is very little demand from todays younger generation and many older ones come to that .  MM  

All true - I think a large part of it is that it takes both time and effort to do something from scratch, which is the case with cooking most game - then add on top (like you say) potential imperfections and unfamilarity (and relatively high price if buying from a butcher) - and the cheap chicken from Asda looks more and more tempting.

Game ready meals on the other hand - I think there's some margin for success there

[marsh man]

When my siblings ( six with me ) were brought up we had very little money in the household and yet neither of us ever went hungry , a lot of my relations were in the fishing industry and we were surrounded by woods one side and  a fair size estuary the other side that held large numbers of wildfowl so for half of the year we had plenty of fish and wildfowl , game wise we had English Partridges Rabbits and Hares , all these had to be prepared and none of us had come to any harm , Pheasants were way out of our league and when we first started to go beating a brace of Pheasants were making as much money or more than the pay for a days beating , now moving on 50 odd years the average wage around here for a days beating is around £40 , and a brace of Pheasants are worth around 60 pence , yes 60 p , at that rate you will soon have to pay for someone to eat a Pheasant and yet all you hear is about promoting game , you say you have to pay good money to buy them from a butcher , well the last time we went to Holt in North Norfolk the butcher there had a window display that was full of processed Pheasants , t b h I had seen better but they were oven ready and they were £2.50 each or three for a fiver so it was like buy two and get one free , I would imagine they got them for nothing and processed them for about a pound apiece so they might had made £2 for every three they sold , some of the ole keepers would turn over in there grave if they saw todays prices .    MM

[Bigbob]

My son eats two birds at a sitting , but his fav is making  pheasant fajitas 

[PeterHenry]

6 minutes ago, marsh man said:

When my siblings ( six with me ) were brought up we had very little money in the household and yet neither of us ever went hungry , a lot of my relations were in the fishing industry and we were surrounded by woods one side and  a fair size estuary the other side that held large numbers of wildfowl so for half of the year we had plenty of fish and wildfowl , game wise we had English Partridges Rabbits and Hares , all these had to be prepared and none of us had come to any harm , Pheasants were way out of our league and when we first started to go beating a brace of Pheasants were making as much money or more than the pay for a days beating , now moving on 50 odd years the average wage around here for a days beating is around £40 , and a brace of Pheasants are worth around 60 pence , yes 60 p , at that rate you will soon have to pay for someone to eat a Pheasant and yet all you hear is about promoting game , you say you have to pay good money to buy them from a butcher , well the last time we went to Holt in North Norfolk the butcher there had a window display that was full of processed Pheasants , t b h I had seen better but they were oven ready and they were £2.50 each or three for a fiver so it was like buy two and get one free , I would imagine they got them for nothing and processed them for about a pound apiece so they might had made £2 for every three they sold , some of the ole keepers would turn over in there grave if they saw todays prices .    MM

I suppose that's true as well. I haven't taken the long veiw on prices of game in butchers - only what I have known in my (relatively short) adult life. I saw photos of a butcher selling braces of pheasants for £4.50 last week - they were (barely plucked / still needed picking over) and quite a few were shot damaged with ripped skin in places.

There's also somone online selling once frozen wood pigeon for £5.99 per bird - which seems a tad unhinged for someone who has only ever known game to be cheap.

[London Best]

5 hours ago, JohnfromUK said:

If you breast out the game, they all keep MUCH better in the freezer if you vac pac them.

I do have a vacuum packer, and my own chiller.

 

5 hours ago, marsh man said:

I wonder how many Pheasants , or any game / fowl come to that are eaten by sportsmen because that is the right thing to do rather than for the taste alone , in this hectic world we live in not everyone have got the time to pluck a brace of pheasants and if you have got the time then how many of the household like eating shot game , my wife never liked duck/game neither did my daughter or the grand kids , so whatever I done it was for me only , very often I would have much more hanging up in my shed or garage than I could handle and the stuff that go in the freezer often get left for a while as this time of the year you get a constant flow of stuff come your way , more so now the demand is low , plenty of shoots around here tell the helpers to help themselves to whatever they want as non end up at the dealers , in the last six days I had a brace from last Saturday , a Mallard I shot Wednesday night and another brace of long tails today , I will use one up tomorrow for Saturdays night tea and the rest up before our next shoot in two weeks time , I try and avoid putting duck in the freezer as they don't pluck very well once they are thawed out and I always thought that Mallard were pretty reliable when it came to eating them , both hot or cold they were ideal , that was until I brought home the first Mallard I ate this season , a really fat Drake in perfect condition with hardly a mark on it , done it in White wine sauce for most of the afternoon and it ended up as one of , if not the toughest duck I had ever eaten , it was tough as old boots and even the dog had to chew it , and if a seasoned Labrador do that then it must be tough 

We pretty much live on game and venison here, year round. For the last thirty or forty years the freezers (note the plural) have always been full.
I have been plucking and dressing game since 1961, although that was only half a dozen pheasants a season in those days. My wife also enjoys cooking and eating game. 
I must say I have never put a duck, or any other game, in a freezer with its jacket still on and then plucked it after thawing. Always dressed before freezing here. 
Mallard are not always ‘reliable’, as you put it. I have had a few that were a bit rough.