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dpack

pheasant help please.

i have been given 4 huge pheasants , 4 days hung so far and doing b n b in the shed until tomorrow.

i will crown and leg em cos i cant be doing with fancy work on inedible bits

so 4 crowns 8 legs
one pheasant eater with a freezer , salt , dehydrator, pans etc

i was thinking pressed game terrine frozen in portions but i am very open to suggestions

imho stew is best with un hung and a bit bulky ( these birds would make stew for a small tribe ) so my usual plan seems less than ideal.
one brace are really huge, the boy is the biggest i have ever had , the other brace are just unusually big

any suggestions ?
Nick

At this time of year they’re likely tough. So stew and slow cooking or marinade is the way forward. I thought I had little to suggest here but then found myself grilling pheasant thighs in teriyaki marinade (24h).

Then sliced and mixed with egg noodles and various sliced spring onions, peppers, garlic, chilli, coriander and celery. In the fridge for L to take for lunch during the week.

Seems to keep me out of trouble for a bit.
Shan

I confit the legs, strip the meat off and make Pithiviers.
sean

Pheasant rillettes?
Nick

Phealletes.
dpack

so far i have a bottle of old rosie as a marinade base for sweet n sour limbs slow cooked, glazed, shredded and portioned for later use.

i will see how much breast meat i end up with but at the mo im thinking a couple of kilos of cooked cubed meat in gravy would be compact and useful for assorted hearty dishes

thanks folks.
dpack

cubed breast browned and cooking off in 2 litres of good chook stock Cool

8 legs in s n s cider marinade Cool

just a forensic observation that the shooters wont see.

filling them with corn for breakfast can lead to a rather close quarters battle and giving the guns 1/4 choked or open( at a guess ) loaded with 240 shot cartridges can get a bit messy especially as small shot going fast pulls feathers into the holes

one leg had 15 entry wounds below the knee , the rest of it looked like it stepped on an ied once it took off its clothes Rolling Eyes
it must have been close enough to club it with the butt

a couple of others had rather more holes than required

bigger lumps, more choke and a bit further away is good, with 80 shot 2 or 3 hits is plenty for a kind kill and a tidy time in the kitchen.
harder to hit em, easier to prep em Wink

2 out of 4 were pretty ok and would roast if the diner was cautious, 2 needed searching for metal and feathers once in bits

rum n raisins is quiet , a happy farewell party and easy to prep Laughing
dpack

i just remembered the legs Rolling Eyes

should be softish by the morning, old rosie and live cider vinegar is a rather robust marinade Laughing

not as catabolic as pineapple enzymes but mushy amino acid soup is but a forgetting away
Bebo

I'm hearing that pheasant fajitas are popular with the game shots that I know.

5 or 6 shot, 28 or 32 grams and don't shoot 'em when they are on the end of your gun (unlike clays when 8 shot are good and turning them to powder is fun)
dpack

if i understand you are using numbers for sizes and i am using numbers for how many in the load Laughing

just to complicate things a decent load to use on phessies is one that can deliver several holes at fatal energy

as the terminal placements are a bit random overkill is a kind thought , i would favour bigger lumps and better aim from bit further away for kind death and easy kitchen prep.
overkill with each shot having enough energy to drop it for the dogs even if it only gets hit by one shot somewhere is not my style but it is better than less thoughtful options.

ex fil used fairly chunky shot, a rather bangy load and a very nice purdey. his birds had 2 to 5 holes and almost never had shot, feathers or shattered bones for cook to deal with.
Bebo

Yup. 8 shot is 2.2mm and you get 450 of them to every 28 gram cartridge. 5 shot is 2.8mm and you get 220 of them per 28 gram cartridge.

For clays you want lots of pellets as clays are fairly small and can be missed by gaps in the pattern. Live quarry you want something big enough to get through the feathers and kill, rather than wounding.
dpack

my weapon of choice for phessies is a car bumper, usually a clean head shot and often little more than a few bruises to the meaty bits.

the tidiest shot birds i have come across were dick's ducks. he loaded for geese when wildfowling so one or two large holes right through was the usual end for donald. tidy as a .22 rifle
Shan

We have the pheasant shoot shooting across our fields today. They're bloody useless. I watched one chap miss 5 birds. Laughing
Bebo

We have the pheasant shoot shooting across our fields today. They're bloody useless. I watched one chap miss 5 birds. Laughing


A lot of game shots are absolutely useless. We did a corporate entertainment shoot at work last year. It was an absolute piece of piss. I shot 47 out of 50 and should never have missed the three I did. One client who has numerous game days every year managed 21.
dpack

dick and his mate had various shooting parties , often corporate, with some the birds were fare safer than the beaters or the rest of the gun line.

getting a pierced earlobe is a bit radical for a retired brig. gen. Laughing not funny if he had not almost avoided the end with the holes quickly enough, as it was he never regained hearing in that ear.

a few had to be sent home for an inability to follow simple safety instructions, stepping out, swinging into the line, being so drunk they could barely walk across a field etc etc Rolling Eyes

however holding shooting parties is a means to pay for hedging work and such like as well as for raising your own phessies ( which can be oven readied in a similar way to chooks rather than shredded in the air).

ps several of the dogs refused to work if they saw there were strangers shooting.
picking shot out of a labrador is a messy business and they don't like it.
Shan

I've been trying to convince the shoot not to shoot over our house. I've already had one injury from falling shot. Rolling Eyes
buzzy

I've been trying to convince the shoot not to shoot over our house. I've already had one injury from falling shot. Rolling Eyes


Next time you hear the patter of falling shot, why not try long drawn out scream, cut off abruptly?

Henry
dpack

Laughing Shan

Laughing
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