Yuck, I Plucked A Duck!

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS UNFILTERED, GRAPHIC IMAGES OF DEAD DUCKS.

I walk back from milking cows as a pair of ducks do a fly-by, quacking at one another. Without meaning to, my hand grips into a fist, thinking about what it felt like to hold the quacker organ in my hand. I was surprised that it felt hard like a shell. The male's quacker is bigger than the female's, I learned.

For a few weeks, I’m working on a dairy farm in Hari Hari on the west coast of New Zealand and this is opening weekend for duck hunting season. It is a meeting of the “utes” (short for utility pick-up trucks) with trucks, guys, dogs, and shotguns pouring into the little town of 200. I get swept into one group’s duck cleaning process; they had shot 40 or 50.

Given the culture I grew up in where there are few rituals and traditions, I'm impressed by the extent to which the hobby of duck hunting brings people together, giving the community something to rally on together. It has to: it's a lot of work! The men go out hunting, bring back their kill, and convene to drinketh of the communal beverage (beer) and skin their kills before cooking a feast for the township. 

Someone picks up a dead duck off the back of a ute, runs it through the feather plucker (a power sander with a special attachment) and hands it to me, gripping it by the head. The body is limply dangling from the long neck. I put my hand on its mostly featherless back to support its weight and the head flops back, hanging like a bobble on a beanie. As if to say, "well are you going to do this, or what?", the beak sort of swings in a pecking-like motion against my forearm. It smells like dead animal, which you get used to eventually. 

It is time to on put my big girl panties, which consist of a disgusted facial expression, shifting my weight quickly from foot-to-foot like I'm stepping on hot coals, and singing out a mantra of “eww gross, eww gross, eww eww!” My theory is that if you're doing something difficult, it's OK to cry (or in this case act grossed-out) and you're not a "sissy" as long as you do it anyways. Don't "they" say bravery isn't about an absence of fear, but about courage to do it anyways? Crying or showing physical signs of freaking out is like sweating for the emotions, right? 

I am to pluck out the remaining feathers and quill bits with my bare hands. To get the ones under the wing, I lift it and as I do, I can feel the muscles contracting beneath the flesh

Next, I move to the gutting station where I am taught to slice off the butt hole in order to cut from there to the rib cage. This gives me room to stick my hand inside. I scoop out the stomach and intestines into a giant bin of Yuck with a capital "Y" (also serving as the repository for empties). The hardest part is removing the heart because it is all the way up in the chest, so you really have to stick your hand through the fowl thing. The hearts go into a separate bag as a treat for somebody’s mom’s cat. (He’s never heard the end of it from the year he forgot to bring back even one duck heart for that fat cat).

Throughout the rest of the day, I am reminded of the whole experience whenever I get a waft of my hands. They still smell faintly of dead duck, despite having scrubbed from fingernail to elbow with three different kinds of soap. This reinstates my discomfort and inner conflict. On the one hand, if I’m willing to eat roast duck, I should be willing to pluck and gut it (and by that logic, kill it, too, though I have not yet done that dirty work). On the other hand, these are now lifeless animals whose heads, wings, and feet were unceremoniously chopped off with an ax. (I am slightly creeped out to discover that I found satisfaction in hacking off the bits that make the ducks look like animals. It was easier to handle them once they looked more like something I would see at a butcher shop.) 

I take a walk to clear my head and the most amazing thing in this whole process is that I have made it well into adulthood having never really considered in detail where my food comes from. Growing up in the suburbs and moving to the city, I have managed to be so far removed from the source of food that I've never been prompted to ask too many questions. Sure, I've seen the odd over-dramatized food-horror documentary on Netflix, but it's not the same thing. I have gotten away with not really having to think these uncomfortable thoughts, but I cannot avoid it any longer. Why is it that having a connection to my food is what makes me uncomfortable? Would it not make more sense to be uncomfortable about NOT knowing where my food comes from? I have probably eaten my fair share of mass-produced, captivity-raised animals that have eaten god knows what and who may have lived in squalid conditions or been pumped full of steroids. Sure, I have thought about this in passing causing me to self-righteously buy organic whenever I've had enough income to support such a habit. It should be more concerning that I normally live in a world where companies can get away with putting horse meat in hamburgers and nobody notices. But it is just so comforting to see sterile government food safety inspection-stamped meat in the store, neatly cut and wrapped in plastic. If anything, I should take comfort knowing that my supper lived in a great environment, mated on its own freewill and ate well. But I am finding these to be uncomfortable truths. Does it seem like I'm using the word "uncomfortable" a lot? I feel uncomfortable.

Vacuum sealed and ready to be frozen. (Note the boxes of beer in the distance).

Oh, did I tell you? As we gut the ducks, stomach contents often spill out into a smelly mess. Based on the type of grain that comes out, the farmers in the group identify on whose paddock the duck had most recently resided. If it was whole corn kernels, it was on so-and-so’s farm. If it was barley, you knew it was the other guy’s farm, etc. Talk about knowing where your food comes from! This should be about the only context in which seeing stomach contents ought to be comforting, but for some reason it is not.

As the duck cooks, we sit around in the living room with more beers, watching a movie. Someone texts that there are more ducks hanging out by the side of the highway. A small contingent of television viewers get up off the couch piling into the back of a ute to finish them off with their pellet-loaded shotguns. I do not go with them. They are back within 20 minutes, having taken another 7 or 8. Not all were retrieved this time. 

They shot a few Paradise ducks, which saddens me a little (Although in reality it shouldn't because they are a non-native invasive species, probably harmful to the native birds). Paradise ducks mate for life and go everywhere with their partner. You never see them solo. I have been told that when one partner dies, the other dies shortly thereafter like a romantic tragedy film. However, I laugh uncontrollably when a hunter recounts (with no shortage of curse words) that you have to shoot the female first, because if you do, the male always comes back to find her, at which point you can pop him off, too. But if you shoot the male first, the female just goes on her merry way and never comes looking for her partner.

Word got back that the pub (which has two pet goats, by the way) was cooking up duck stew. Then for some reason, discussion breaks out about the merits of curried duck and it is unanimously decided that curried duck would be gross (I silently disagree, but am confused about the connection between duck stew and curried duck).

The group of ten or so sits down to enjoy the roast duck feast after a weekend of labor to obtain it. Beneath the table, some of the dogs are allowed to lick the bones clean. After all, they earned it by helping to retrieve the fallen birds. It is tasty indeed. But I feel uneasy eating it. I am the only one who does not eat the skin, which still has a few quill remains sticking into it. Though it would be more ethical not to waste what was killed, I cannot stop thinking about how the skin looked on the bird: almost like a layer of mesh or netting holding the lifeless body together. Some with compound fractures protruding from the skin where bones had broken as the ducks fell from flight. Blood oozing in places where the pellets had hit their mark. I decide not to eat the skin, leaving a slightly embarrassingly messy pile on my plate where others' plates are clean.

It is surreal sitting at this table, munching away. To my left, a dinner mate spits out a pellet bullet from the meat. To my right, a hunter is drinking and laughing, still with his camouflage ball cap that has a few feathers stuck to it.