Suppose I was to tell you that you can go from shooting a grouse to eating it in just a half hour to an hour. As surprising as it might be, it isn’t just possible, it is likely, if you know how.
Roughed grouse, sage grouse and blue grouse are common over much of North America. These stout birds, sometimes also called ptarmigans, present a wonderful opportunity for hunters. The good tasting meat can be prepared in so many ways that it makes the birds quite popular for a lot of people. It is also incredibly simple to get them from the field to the table.
Skinning the Grouse - 2 to 10 Mins
- The first step is to skin the grouse. A mistake that is common is to try to pluck it. The skin tears easily and is tightly connected to the feathers, so it is much easier to skin it. To do this, cut a ring around the base of the neck, just deep enough that it penetrates the skin. This can be done with your hands, since the skin is so thin, but a hunting knife is a little easier to work with.
- Slip your fingers between the skin and the meat and pull downward, toward the tail. The skin should pull freely away from the meat and should come off easily. Chop off the wings just inside of where the primary feathers are, on the body side, and also remove the skin from these. Continue down the bird all the way to the tail and feet.
- Chop off the legs at the point where the skin is tight to the bone, then make an incision around the anus, then pull the skin the rest of the way off. This should leave you with only the tail that hasn’t been skinned, and it can be removed as well. This whole process takes more time to explain than to do, and a person can skin a grouse in less than two minutes, once they have the knack of it.
Cleaning the Grouse - 5 Mins
Using the sharp knife, cut through the membrane that surrounds the abdomen, in an oval and using the backbone and ribs as guides. You don’t need to cut deeply, just sever the membrane. Reach inside the bird and pull out the entrails. Make sure that you also remove the windpipe, which is on the underside of the throat, as well as the craw or gizzard, which is near the top of the breast bone.
This entire process should take no more than five minutes.
Rinse and Cut the Grouse - 5 Mins
Wash the meat of the grouse under running water, inside the body cavity and outside of the bird. Once the blood and any stray feathers or debris have been removed, cut off the legs at the hip joint. Cut the breast off by slicing through the base of the ribs, where they connect to the backbone. If you wish, you can break the back in two pieces. Cut the breast up the center to cut it into halves.
The rinsing and cutting of the grouse also should take about five minutes.
Cook the Bird - 10 to 15 Mins
At this point, you’ve gone from a grouse killed in the field to one that is ready for cooking, and it has taken you less than 15 minutes. Cook the grouse any way that you wish. If it is fried, it shouldn’t take much more than 10 minutes to prepare, but other methods and recipes may take a longer amount of time. Still, it is quite possible to take a grouse from the field to the table in about a half hour to less than an hour.
The more times you do this, the more proficient at it that you are likely to become. It is easy to see why grouse or ptarmigans are so popular. Not only are they great tasting and so numerous that they aren’t difficult to hunt, they are quite simple to process. It shouldn’t take much more than a half hour to go from squeezing the trigger to bringing the fork to your mouth. This is a fantastic game bird, all the way around.
