Cleaning/plucking/dressing geese

sealhunter

sealhunter

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Back in the Peace Country
How do you guys pluck your geese?
I used to do it without any special aid (actually I still do). Then I started using parafin, but did not love that method but it did an ok job.

Anyone with any good tricks?

Anyone here scald them anymore?
 
I just get to work and do it. I test pluck a few patches to see if they'll pluck clean. If they have a lot of pin feathers, I skin and breast. If they pluck clean I get a beer and a chair and a garbage bag and get to work. I save only a few geese to roast whole. Most of them I disjoint after plucking and bag the legs, wings and breasts in separate packages. The breasts get sent off to be made into sausage and hotdogs. The wings and legs are saved for braising and confit. I dry pluck and then blast off the fine feathers with a propane torch.

Got three on the duck hunt today (along with a 2 man limit of ducks) but gave them to the young Calgary chef who went hunting with me. He hasn't shot many geese and has some special plans for these ones.
 
Canadian Bush Wacker said:
What is rice breast????
Click to expand...

http://www.ducks.org/blogs/1/46/index.html

Sarcosystis.bmp


I had to chuck a pintail that had it this season. The first I've seen here. You can still check for it on plucked birds by peeking under the skin around the neck or where you cut off the wing.
 
nice

thanks saved me sending the link and yes they say its not transferable to humans but there is no way iam eating that meat, never thats it. i would like the guy who said it ok to eat the meat, eat it and look me in the eyes and say ummmmm yummy. and I ve seen a couple mallards with it so far this year.

sv7772
 
I've always known about rice breast but have only run into it twice. One mallard for the last two seasons. Last season I shot a mallard that most refer to as a blonde mallard, either genetic lack of pigment which is very rare or could be cross with tame duck some where down the line and the colouring came through. Anyways I cut it open, saw the rice breast, and didnt want to eat it, so figure why not get it mounted. Even though I already cut and plucked most of the chest the taxidermist was able to salvage the bird. Happy enough with the mount considering what I did to it.

blonde4_800x600.jpg
 
BTW we took two mallards today that were both adults and breasted one with the skin off and then plucked the breast of the other and breasted it with the skin on. Cooked them both the same way (salt, pepper, frying pan). Definitely better with the skin ON. If you don't want to pluck the whole bird, you should at least pluck the breast and leave the skin on it. It makes a real difference.
 
Early season birds I breast out and take the legs. After the pin feathers are done I like to pluck and wax birds that aren't too shot up. DuxWax works better than straight parrafin and you can reuse it. We had a pretty good shoot this morning(17 Canadas), and I even kept the livers,hearts and gizzards. Has anyone ever made goose liver pate?
 
I like to breast and take the skin off, then replace with either thin slices of black forest ham or bacon, and broil them on low for 30 mins, turning once. Man that tastes good.
No special methods here, just hard work.
 
old electric motor with this thing on the shaft that has 3" stiff rubber flaps on it. plug it in and run the bird against it and you will have feathers flying like crazy. you end up with a nice clean bird with nothing but a few feathers that still need plucking and a bunch of "hairs" that you just torch off.

my dad came home with it one day so im not sure what this thing was actually for or if he made it but it sure works good.
 
I've seen one of those motorized jobs. Looked a giant ### toy !!!:D
but it did the job.

I do the same as sjemac with the pluck and torch.

9/10 times though i breast then out, but since it's Dad's first ones, figured a pluck might be order,

I used to scald sea ducks for almost 10 seconds and that really helped, but it's messy, and messy...
 
I'll usually just pluck the ducks that aren't too shot up, otherwise I pluck only the breasts. I've tried the scalding method but it stunk so bad and didn't make it all that much easier. Wet feathers are worse than dry I find.

You just have to put the work in I suppose. A nice mallard only takes about 10 mins anyway.
 
For easy feather removing, take your trusty turkey fryer and heat it up to 140'F. Boil the bird for approximately 3 minutes and the feathers should come off without any problems. I found that waterfowl (as opposed to wild turkey) required a second dunk for the feathers closer to the skin.
 
Depends on how you want to eat it I suppose. Just cooking the breast meat like steaks then I'd leave the skin on but if you're making sausage or jerky just cut the skin back and remove the meat. If they're big geese you could also take the legs off do something with all the drumsticks.
 
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