How to Prepare Wild Grouse

Wild Grouse is a relatively easy game animal to clean and prepare for cooking. These steps will show you just how.

-hunting knife (any knife works, but it's better to have a knife designated for this so that you aren't contaminating one you would use for normal food prep)

-garbage bag

-paper bag, newspaper, or anything disposable that can be used as a mat.

-sink or other source of running water

-paper towels

-plastic gloves (if preferred)

-a pair of shoes you don't mind getting dirty

Find a good place to clean your grouse. The best places to do this would be on a porch, driveway, or garage. You will need a flat surface and a space that will be easy to clean. There will be lots of feathers spread in the process.

Lay your bag/newspaper/mat on the ground and place your grouse on top of it.

spread the grouse's wings out with the bird laying on its back and its tail pointed towards you. Place a foot on each wing. Your feet should be placed towards the inside of the wing, close to the body.

Firmly grasp both of the grouse's legs together and begin slowly, but forcefully pulling the legs upwards with your feet still standing on the wings.

Keep pulling upwards until the wings and breasts are separated from the rest of the body. If all goes right, the legs, head, neck and organs should separate in this one motion.

If not everything separates from the breasts and wings, carefully remove any remaining parts from them with your knife.

Once you are left with the breasts and the wings, remove the wings. You should be able to break off the wings at the joint but if not, you should be able to cut them off just as easily with your knife since the bones are hollow.

Once you are left with the breasts, dispose of the other parts of the grouse into your garbage bag.

At this point, your grouse breasts should look something like this. Take it over to your sink/source of running water and clean off any feathers or other material on the meat.

If you used a shotgun to obtain your grouse, you may begin to notice dark streaks in the flesh. These streaks are from pellets from the shotgun pulling feathers through the breast, and indicate that a pellet is still in the breast. Identify these marks as well as other pellets which can be identified as small dark spots in the flesh. (Note: if you are cleaning a dark meat breast, unlike the one in this photo, the pellets will be a bit harder to locate. Be sure to feel through the meat with your fingers to find any.)

To remove pellets and feathers from the breast, use your knife to make a small hole to connect to the one made by the pellet.

Once you have created this "tunnel" from one side of the breast to the other, remove the pellet/debris and THOROUGHLY rinse the hole out. If you find a hole with no pellets or debris inside, you should still rinse it out thoroughly. You will want any trace of lead from the pellet removed. Repeat this step until the breast is completely clean.

Once the meat is thoroughly cleaned, separate the breast from the bone using your knife. Cut along the breast bone on both sides to removes each breast. Each grouse will yield you two decently sized pieces of meat. Rinse them off and place them on a paper towel. Prior to cooking, if desired, remove the skin or any other undesirable bits using your knife.

If you do not plan on immediately cooking your grouse, tightly wrap the meat in plastic. If you plan on cooking the meat on that same day, store it in the fridge. If you plan on cooking the grouse more than 12 hours after harvesting it, store it in the freezer.