Charlie Got Some Pheasants

At some point in ones life to be a man you must kill and prepare an animal. Now I didn’t kill anything yet, I just did the woman’s business of plucking these birds but it is one step closer to being a man, right?... RIGHT?!!

Charlie went hunting with his Dad in the country and brought back "dinner" and unveiled these 2 beautiful birds, which hung lifelessly conjoined by a string.

Charlie hadn’t done any of this before and wanted some help in preparing these birds. I certainly didn’t have any prior experience either, but I was more than eager to help. I still didn’t know if I would eat some and break my vegetarian nature or not but that decision was made for me in the end.

Charlie was prepared; he looked up the instruction online and we had a game plan. We were confused and very excited about what we were about to undertake and I may say a bit over confident as you can see on our smug faces.

A.J. had done this kind of thing before however and as you can see from his expression knew that we were going about this the wrong way, but commended our efforts. He was able to give some instruction of how to properly cut off the heads. He also offered some helpful advice

"It should look like chicken, if it looks more like bloody beef then you have a problem."

-AJ.

"We shouldn't eat it?"

-Tim

"If all fails we can just get take out"

-Charlie

When we started the task we were filled with gusto and were excited about what we were doing, suddenly we weren’t just common consumers we were an active part of the food chain. I was overcome with how much it takes to actually eat meat. You have to hunt, collect, drain of all blood, pluck, gut, clean and cook before consumption; it’s a hell of a lot of work. We decided to wet pluck these birds which meant that we had to submerge them in scalding water before taking out the feathers.

Now the smell of a dead, wet bird is similar to wet dog but with a little added je ne sais quoa. Soon after we started our enthusiasm faded as we struggled to remove the feathers with any sort of grace.

It was truly a disgusting experience as it makes a little pop as the feather is being removed from the skin and some are more difficult to remove than others. In the instructions it warned to take our time doing the plucking as they have weak skin and tend to tear if you do it too quickly. This is very true, we did take our time and it took forever to get half done (which is when I peaced out) but that didn’t stop the skin from ripping and releasing a horrible smell.

We were standing there in silence next to one another attacking these lifeless birds as their decapitated heads watched as if to say, "No no no, your’e doing it all wrong, I deserved better than this." Once in a while we would make little groans about how horrible this was and complain.

Charlie managed to finish one of the birds completely and couldn’t continue to the other one just then. Later when he shared this horrifying experience with Tom when he got home Tom swiftly replied that he would have been able to take them to a butcher and have it done for about 2 pounds each, so all of this was only about 75p worth of work.

When it came time to take them to the butcher they had been dead for about 4 days and smelled horrible so unfortunately they were not eaten which is the saddest part. Not all was lost though; the feathers are being used to make a head dress but a friend and local artist Sophie Milner.