Put a thermometer to it at lunch today, temp is right at 34F. Guess it will be on for this weekend. I will smell it when I cook it.

Man that just sounds risky to leave them in there for so long.

Every piece of beef you eat from the store or at a restaurant has been through an aging process.

not buying it Dave

Put a thermometer to it at lunch today, temp is right at 34F. Guess it will be on for this weekend. I will smell it when I cook it.

ALL beef is aged before it ever leaves the meat plant.

the only negative I see of this is potentially wasting a bird due to gut juices seeping through a wound channel and ruining the meat.

My step dad grew up hunting the Chesapeake with his old man. They would hang dux in the garage for over a week before they did anything with them. And they didn't breast them, they plucked and baked them.

I need to get me a duck plucker, too much work plucking by hand.

the only negative I see of this is potentially wasting a bird due to gut juices seeping through a wound channel and ruining the meat. If I had a good specimen though, I might try it.

I sometimes do what Guy did, but most of the time my beer/game fridge is loaded so I don't have room.

Breasted out 6 gadwall Saturday, 7 days after bagging them and putting them in the fridge. The temp was 34F and ducks were left intact, on their back in the crisper drawers.

There was no odor while they were aging or when I removed them or while I was breasting them out, not even normal duck smell.

The breast meat seemed to come of the bone easier. I think the meat was little darker. I did soak the breast meat in salt water for about 12 hours.

I cut each breast piece in half, wrapped in bacon and added salt and pepper. Grilled at about 500F for 8 minutes. The texture of the meat seemed a little more like beef but it taste like darn good duck to me.

Every piece of beef you eat from the store or at a restaurant has been through an aging process.

That is the reason for laying them on their back, not sure how the gut juices would seep in with gravity at work. But if you got a bird shot up real good, maybe not the best to age. The ones I have been aging, some have been shot-up pretty good, with 8 or so pellets to the breast. I use kent #4, and I shoot’m close, rarely do I find pellets in the meat, they mostly go (95% of the time) strait through the breast and breast bone. I will say from the ducks I have aged, the shot-up ducks smell more than the ducks that are not shot up. Overall, aged ducks smell less, and aged ducks that are not shot up have very little smell. But I think the smell comes from the blood and blood clots in the breast meat, not the guts. I cut the meat in to 6 pieces to kabob (12 pieces per duck), this helps to get all the blood clots cleaned out of the meat, run water over it real good to get the blood clots out. Where blood clots remain, I’ll make slits in the meat and work the clots out with a knife, scrap them away. Pellet holes I make sure are all cleaned out as well from blood clots or feathers that may have got punched in there. After a thorough cleaning, I have noticed there is no smell. I then brine for 24 hrs.

Cooked these guys last night, they were ducks I shot on Thursday Jan 26th, 5 gaddys and 1 teal..



I shot these and never went home till the next day, so they sat in the ice chest for about 30 hrs before I got them to the fridge. Cleaned them on 2/7, that is 12 days aging, then 24 hrs in brine, cooked them last night pretty darn good! Just pepper, garlic salt, minced onion, and kabob it (bacon/duck/jap/duck/bacon/duck/jap etc....).





I like putting all the tenders on one kabob, they tend to cook a little faster, that is thin one in front..