Lloyd, apologies for hijacking thread, but I'll keep the ball rolling until you get home.
Until last year I always gutted birds the day of the hunt. Two years ago, I either read somewhere or was inspired through a flash of pure laziness that freezing birds intact kept them fresher by better protecting them from freezer burn. I understand the argument in favor of immediate gutting. However, bad juices from shot wounds are already in the wound channel and freezing them in place would not worsen the effect. Thats been my experience with woodcock the past two seasons. I took a pair last weekend to Floyd with some fresh chanterelles and he was amazed at the freshness of flavor of the birds. I only freeze woodcock intact but see no reason not to do other birds the same way other than the storage issue. Geo, I dont parade dead birds in front of my wife and the frozen woodcock are kept in a cardboard box inside the freezer which keeps them out of sight and also prevents odd shape frozen objects from falling on my toes when I open the door. I appreciate some aspects of French culture, especially French guns, but cooking the birds with guts intact is not an aspect of French culture that I share. Julia was in town last week and I thawed out dove and woodcock for her smothered in fresh wild chanterelles. She Bogarted the wc and chants and I ate the dove. She raved about them. I rarely breast dove and like to cook them whole, plucked and drawn. Heres a photo showing the relative size of each. The dove were late October and the WC, January. I flash cook the birds on high, indirect heat on the grill. With lid down, the temps exceed 500 F. The dove cook to my satisfaction in 5 minutes and the wc, 7. I rigged a vertical roaster out of a wire coat hanger which holds 4 birds. Here are two wc I cooked earlier this month. Note the color of the cooked wcs flesh.
