I used to pluck my turkeys....Not anymore......If you want to deep fry the entire bird, yeah, plucking them is the best way to go......What I've been lately is skinning the turkey, removing the breast and filleting it up into strips, remove the legs, filleting that up...basically, just skinning the bird and picking the meat off.....cutting it into nuggets and deep frying it....the dark meat looks bad, but it's just as tastey as the white breast meat....and takes considerabley less time....