Shot this bird the other afternoon. When getting ready to breast him I felt something hard under the feathers after pushing the feathers and skin away there was a hard black and grey flat spot about 1" long and about 1/4" wide. I never cut the breast but just lifted the piece out with the tip of a knife. Under the hard piece was a white pouch that had like roots running into the meat. Has anyone ever seen anything like this? From the outside this bird seemed fine no visual problems in flight or gaps in feathers. The hole it left in the breast is pictured and like I said before there was no cutting on this breast at all.
I have seen something similar as well on ducks and turkeys but it was always more defined for lack of better terms than this. The black piece was kind of 3 dimensional T-shaped with the leg of the T going into the breast and the pouch was coming off of that.
I shot 2 white wing early this season that had what appeared to be pieces of wood broken off in their breast. It healed up around the wound, but still had a gnarly looking discoloration where the breast made contact with the wood. I went ahead and breasted them out, as they had no smell and no bugs. Looked pretty superficial, so I tossed them in the bags with the others. When it comes time to cook, I will just cut the bad area off and roll on.
