What is meant by hanging shot game? Tradition tells us game birds must be hung. Some people have even propagated the rural myth that a pheasant should be hung until maggots start to drop from it — something that is massively misleading. On a warm October day, in a fly-ridden area, even a fine example of pheasant may well have fly eggs on it within the hour. In the depths of winter, in a place with few flies, you might be able to hang the birds for weeks on end without them acquiring maggots.
It is nonsense and should be treated as such. Most people prefer the taste of pheasant while it is fresh. Of course, you need to allow the birds to go into and out of rigor mortis.
It is a good idea to leave them for 24 hours if you can, as this helps the meat to relax, but anything more than that is not needed, unless you prefer a deeper flavour to your meat. If the shot birds are on the game cart for some time and it is a warm day, decay will have already started. I could not agree more but, when we are talking about wildfowl , a little longer hanging will be beneficial. Even short hanging times will need considering, though. To keep things simple, we will limit ourselves to the following variables and we will add a constant.
Those variables are the condition of bird; the lag time to hanging starting and the conditions during this time; the hanging environment; and personal preference. When you choose your birds , I would obviously advise you to pick the cleanest-looking, plump, dry specimens available. However, as all game must be eaten, do not be afraid of the odd harder-shot bird, even if it landed in a puddle and was retrieved by a rather vigorous dog.
Now you need to consider the onward process. Having arrived home, you will need to consider which birds are in the best nick. There are some fairly obvious signs here.
Then the first bite, for someone who has never tasted an aged bird, is simply unforgettable. While big game requires aging the meat in temperatures varying from degrees Fahrenheit, you can safely age upland birds anywhere from degrees, a fact that I initially found hard to accept as a professionally-trained line cook. I have aged pheasants , chukar , quail , and grouse in several states, all with varying temperatures during the hunting season. What I found is that temperature and number of days hanging both matter a lot.
A ten-day-aged pheasant tastes considerably better than one aged for five days. Additionally, temps hovering around are preferable to temps that drop near or 32 or below. This past season, I hung a rooster for nine days with temps in the teens at night. I neither pluck nor dress my upland birds prior to aging them. When aging larger birds like a turkey or goose, you would want to pull guts, as those birds are so large that the organs will remain warm for longer, potentially spoiling the bird.
While I have found that seven to ten days is preferable for roosters, smaller birds like chukar and grouse can achieve a similar effect after only six days. For quail and similar-size birds, three days should suffice.
Reach out to me on Instagram WildGameJack with any questions or comments and find my other wild game recipes here. Jack Hennessy grew up in the South Suburbs of Chicago and didn't start hunting until he attended graduate school in Spokane, Washington, at the age of Secondly, it depends on the time of year. A lovely young partridge shot on a warm late summer or early autumn day will only need a day or so at room temperature. In winter, however, when the temperature outside can be colder than in a fridge, it can take a week or so.
Thirdly, it really depends on how strong you want the flavour to be. I, personally, have never enjoyed cooking or eating stinking, green, putrid flesh. As general rule of thumb, therefore, one to two days in late summer and early autumn is sufficient for all birds.
Come late autumn and winter, I would hang birds for four to five days, sometimes a week if the weather is particularly cold. The only bird I eat fresh, with no hanging, is pigeon, as to me they taste and cook far better. Once shot and hung, the bird needs to be plucked. I favour dry plucking to either wet plucking when it is dipped first in a tank of water or the method by which it is first dipped into hot wax, then cooled and the feathers removed in big chunks.
The reason being is that it keeps the bird dry and firm, and avoids it becoming flabby and bloated.
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