How to Prepare a fully feathered Pheasant, and cheat

We get through a lot of pheasants and hate wasting them so rather than trying to find 2 or 3 hours to pluck a few brace, and it is time consuming just because of the amount of feathers and the skin is so thin and delicate especially if there are some weak spots from pellets or over zealous gun dog that you have to take care, I just take off the main joints with no plucking or drawing (degutting).

To do this lay the bird on its back and firstly cut all around the leg just above the scaly part of the lower leg or the base of the drumstick. Having cut through the skin all around the leg, you might have to go through some feathers, bend back the joint back on itself so that it effectively cracks the joint. you should now be able to just pull the lower leg right off and with it some of the tendons that go in to the drumstick. Do the same to the other leg assuming it has one. 

Then grab through the feathers on its breast a decent bit of skin and insert your sharp pointy knife through this skin to make a hole you can now pull apart. You should now be able to rip the skin all the way up to its neck and down to the legs bearing all the breast flesh. Like ripping open someone's shirt with all the buttons pinging off! If you've jointed a chicken and have taken out the wishbone do the same to the pheasant. Not essential but it helps take off all the breast meat. 

Find the centre of the breastbone gently slicing either side of the gristly bit, and take off the whole breast following the contour of the ribcage down towards the wing and down towards the thigh where the breast gets thicker. Just like taking the whole breast off an already cooked chicken. 

Next force the legs back until the thigh joint pops out or at least weakens at the 'hip' of the bird. Now just pull the skin and feathers off the leg as if you are taking the birds trousers off over its knee. The skin and feathers should just pull off the flesh. This will give you the whole leg exposed still attached to the body. Cut between the hip joint keeping as much meat on the thigh joint and cut through until the whole leg is now amputated. The drumsticks are quite sinewy with not much meat on so to tidy things up perhaps just cut the drumstick off at the joint and retain the thigh which has good sinew free meat on it on the bone. 

Discard the feathered carcass and either freeze the joints or find a tasty recipe to pop it in. Valentine Warner's curry with coconut milk is great as the creamy oily coconut milk keeps the pheasant moister than tomato based sauces.  Or wrap in pancetta and bake the individual portions but don't overcook!  Marsala and chestnut is also great as a sauce but doesn't need too much cooking. 

Also works on seagulls but throw the carcass in the bin swiftly followed by the joints.