How to Pluck and Cook a Wild Duck Gourmet Style

Description

In this video, I shoot, pluck, process and cook a wild mallard duck. I show how to immerse it in hot water to make plucking easier and how to cook it in rendered duck fat.

Tags: food,wild game,wild foods,duck,duck huning,hunting,gourmet,camping,wild edibles,survival,self reliance,shawn james,my self reliance,bushcraft,survivor,alone,outdoors

Video Transcription

so what do you do with a duck now that you've shot it if I had a successful day in the field you've got some game to take home and now what do you do with it a couple of ways to deal with birds one is to skin them and just discard the skin along with the feathers very fast but it's a waste of some calories if you're counting calories and you're trying to get as much food value out of the game as possible it's a it's definitely worthwhile to pluck them instead of skin them skinning them is leave some calories behind and also leaves a lot of flavor behind as well so ideally I prefer to pluck the fastest way to pluck waterfowl is to submerge the entire carcass and in just under boiling water it's very hot water so I'll boil the water and then I'll take it outside or if I boil it outside I'll just let it cool first for a minute and then I'll dock the birds in ideally with a duck you want 20 to 30 seconds of dunking time and that will loosen the feathers right up and how you know you pull a feather try to pull the feathers out like I'm doing here and if it doesn't come out yeah very easily then it needs a little bit more dunking and typically it's because the water is not getting in underneath the feathers the feathers have oil in them that make them waterproof and head buoyant and you're gonna want to get the water underneath that and right underneath it down so really swish it around in the water and you'll know it's it's perfect you'll know it's done by the color of the skin you'll see it turns yellow here it's not white any longer it's got a bit of a greasy Ness because the water is rendering the fat and the feathers will actually brush right off you can just kind of slide your hand across and they'll wipe off instead of having to grip them and pluck and pull so that's how I prefer to process waterfowl and even chickens it does make the job a lot quicker a lot easier and get a nice clean job like this at the end so if I was plucking this bird in the field which of course is a lot nicer to do while you're out there in the bush you can leave all the feathers and entrails there

for the other critters but you for transportation you do have to you do have to leave a full wing on for identification purposes for that game warden this wing if that was left on the bird during transportation a conservation officer will be able to identify that as a as a male Mallard they want to be able to check make sure you're staying within your limits four species in this case I'm making duck confit you know put the recipe on the web site as well as why you would use confit for preservation method but the first thing I do is I break the chicken down into small pieces that'll sit flat in a pan then I put it in a plastic bag with these ingredients so I I can you can vary the ingredients and in this case I have garlic juniper berries cedar and thyme and then salt and pepper so after 24 hours of marinating take the pieces put them in a flat pan pour the rendered duck fat over top of it completely submerged if possible and stick it in a 200 degree fahrenheit oven for six or seven hours until the meat falls off the bone so that's it thanks for watching and don't forget to check out the website to see how I incorporate well game into a sustainable and self-reliant lifestyle and diet