Peak duck season (or peking duck season 😉) has come and gone for most of us, with some of us having a few extra cold mornings left on our docket. While duck hunting is revered as a peaceful and bountiful outdoor excursion, there is still more to learn about the anatomy of a duck during the process of bringing that harvest to your table.  

Enjoying your duck harvest down to the quack includes a good understanding on how to break down a duck in all its parts, best methods for removing pellets from the meat for consumption, and which parts of the duck are best for certain types of good eating. Consider it duck anatomy 101… 

Anatomy of a Duck: Before Field Dressing but After the Shot 

Most duck breakdown how-to articles have the obligatory intro paragraph on why it’s important to hang your ducks rather than let them sop up in a wet pile in the bottom of your boat. Though it’s understandable to get caught up in the fun of things, seasoned hunters can attest to the smell and grime that harvest pile has by the end of the day — and that directly affects the meat. So, to follow suit with every other advice column on the market, here is iSportsman giving the same sage advice: Hang your ducks as you hunt if you plan on eating them. Otherwise, it’s practically not worth it. 

Anatomy of a Duck: Plucking, Skinning, and Gutting 

Either the next day, or later that same day, you’ll begin breaking down your ducks at home. Whether to skin or pluck is mostly a matter of preference, though some wild game chefs say that its also dependent on the breed of bird.  Either way, here is a video from wild game chef Hank Shaw on how to pluck  a duck and a video from Alaska Life Skills on how to skin a game bird.  

Shaw describes the next steps best: 

Once plucked or skinned, gutting is easy. I take kitchen shears and clip off the feet, then chop off the head and the second joint on the wing (I toss the wingtips). Then I use the shears to chop off the tail, taking care not to damage the gizzard.  

After that I get some cold water running and then reach into the cavity and grab the gizzard. This usually pulls out the intestines, too. I toss the intestines and keep the gizzard.  

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That leaves the heart and liver. I gently reach inside and with my fingers dislodge any connective tissue holding the liver in place, then pull it and the heart out. I trim the top part of the heart off, right above the ring of white fat. 

For the livers, you need to remove the bile duct, which looks like a green Nyquil gel cap. I gently pinch this away from the liver under cold water without breaking it — if you break it, the bile fluid is very bitter and can spoil the liver, thus the running water. 

After that, rinse quickly and the duck is ready for the fridge. I pat them dry with paper towels and put them in a closed plastic container in the refrigerator for up to a week before freezing. I always will keep them at least overnight to firm up the fat. 

Anatomy of a Duck: Breaking Down the Bird 

With the very most outside and the very most inside of the duck taken care of, what is left is a matter of breaking down t 

he remainder of the bird. Breaking down any type of bird is one of those skills that looks extremely simple on paper and can be done with a little bit of finesse. Here is where you’ll transition from internal duck anatomy to external duck anatomy… 

Step 1: Remove the neck 

If you followed Hank Shaw’s instructions, your duck should be firmed up and ready to break down. If you removed the head but not the neck, now is the time to grab a sturdy knife or meat cleaver and cleanly cut through the neck. The neck is most frequently used in my household as part of a stock or broth made at a later date (see our article on making bone broth for more information on that.) 

Step 2: Remove the Legs 

Serious Eats breaks down this maneuver best: 

Flip the duck onto its side, so that the leg you’re working on is facing up toward you, with the legs pointing off to your left and the place where the neck used to be pointing to your right. Using only your hands, grab the leg you’re removing with one hand so that four fingers rest on the skin-side of the leg and your thumb can firmly grip the exposed flesh side, sort of the way you’d grab a thick book. Then, while holding the body of the duck against the cutting board with your other hand, rotate the hand holding the duck leg forward, pulling up with your thumb and firmly pushing back with your four fingers to pop the ball joint out of its socket. The motion is similar to one you’d use to turn a sock inside out. 

Use your knife to remove the leg by cutting through the joint you just exposed, cutting around the oyster and riding the spine of the bird with your knife to make sure you maximize yield and don’t leave any delicious leg meat on the carcass. Flip the bird back over and repeat this process with the second leg. 

Step 3: Remove the Back 

Place the duck onto the cutting board so the neck area is flush with the board (almost like it’s sitting upside down.) Grab the backbone of the duck and pull forwards until you hear a crack, then while still holding the backbone, slide the knife down the bone removing the back part of the duck. 

At this point, all parts of your duck should be broken down in the way you’d find a bird butchered in any restaurant. But because we’re hunters, there are additional steps: 

Step 4: Fillet the Breasts & Removing Pellets 

With the front part of the bird facing towards you, find the center of the breastbone with your knife and slice downwards. Then, keep your blade close to the center of the bird slice off each breast. Once you have your breast, you can locate and begin to remove shot pellets. If you duck was on the leaner side, you can take the breast and hold it up to a flashlight to reveal the pellets—taking your knife to carefully remove each one. If you have a heartier duck, you can place your breast between two sheets of plastic wrap and tenderize the breast with a meat tenderizer. Reducing the breast plumpness will make it easier to see the pellets with the flashlight method of the naked eye. 

 Removing pellets in remaining parts of the bird requires a thorough examination. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t get them all—plenty of hunters say that the best way to ENTIRELY remove pellets from a bird is to eat it slowly and keep a bowl close by to spit them out into. Alaska Life Skills even shared in his video that he uses to offer his kids a quarter for every pellet they found.  

Butchered Bird… What Now? 

After all the table dressing of your duck the possibilities are endless. I’m a huge fan of Hank Shaw, who has a multitude of duck leg and duck breast recipes to choose from.  Or you can explore not-so-commonly eaten parts of the duck by making crispy fried duck tongues or deviled duck hearts. Me? I’m lazy. The parts of the bird I’m not sure what to do with usually get tossed or saved for a broth. And in my opinion, nothing is better than keeping dinner simple with a slow roasted duck breast with butter and herbs.  

Read more about the anatomy of a duck and other subjects on iSportsmanUSA.