Butchering Small Game and Birds: Rabbits, Hares, Poultry and Wild Birds

Description

BUTCHERING SMALL GAME AND BIRDS is essential reading for those who have embraced self-sufficiency, and who regard small game and birds, both domestic and wild, as an essential part of their diet. The volume covers rabbits, hares, quail, chicken and turkey as well as game birds and provides comprehensive guidance relating to all aspects of the craft of butchery. Topics covered include: .Equipment and how to use and maintain knives correctly .How to humanely dispatch the animal or bird for butchering with speed, precision and almost no suffering [this is of paramount importance] .Butchery techniques including basic small game and bird anatomy, meat inspection and hygiene and dealing with aged birds and animals .Further techniques including paunching, removal of offal, extraction of shot, skinning, plucking, drawing and dressing birds, washing carcases, jointing rabbits and hares and trussing .The preservation of meat, preparing meat for the freezer and hanging and curing of skins is covered following the philosophy that every part of an animal or bird that is usable is used AUTHOR: John Bezzant has written about terriers, ferrets and birds of prey for Gun Mart and has been a regular contributor to The Countryman's Weekly. John was given his first air gun in his early teens and has taken a keen interest in air rifle shooting ever since. John served in the RAF and was taught how to handle high-powered weapons by professionals. Combining his weapons expertise with his wealth of country knowledge, John became an accomplished hunter. He now lives in the Scottish Highlands on a five-acre smallholding. ILLUSTRATIONS: 164 colour photographs

John Bezzant has been a smallholder for over twenty years and a hunter for even longer. He has a vast amount of experience of butchering both domestically reared fowl and stock, and small game and birds taken from the wild. John has held smallholdings in England and Wales and is currently based on a very rugged five-acre smallholding in Scotland, where he tends milk goats, raises chickens and takes meat from the wild.