coyote_buster

everything tastes like chicken, if it dont taste good ill still do it and give it away, my graduation im going to have wild game, instead of regular pork sandwiches, ill have shreded dove sandwhiches,deer taverns, and whatever else

daleh

Finished planting dove fields here is one

npaden

I clean dove with a 2 step process.

Step 1. (In the field) Pull head off. Twist wings off. Insert thumb under sternum and pull entire breast out. Throw remainder away and clean any feathers off the breast. Keep the breast!

Step 2. (In the sink) Snip the wings all the way off with sissors. Insert thumb just under the breastbone and run your thumbs up between the breastbone and the breast. Repeat on other side. Usually you have to use teh sissors to snip the tiny little wishbone off of the breast. This step is a little hard to explain but what you end up with is a boneless breast.

Cook however you want. I prefer to put a jalepeno in the middle of the breast and wrap bacon around it and put on a skewer and grill.

I think dove tastes more like deer than chicken. It is a very dark meat.

FWIW, Nathan

BirdDog Mike

i generally hold the wings and head back with one hand and slide the thumb of the other hand under the breast plate. Pull that up, grab it, twist it right out. Every once in a while, the wing bones won't break at the joints and i'm left cutting the bone with a pair of shears.

Here's last year's opening day haul. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v695/BirdDog_Mike/HuntingFishing/DSC00295.jpg

SamPAhunter

Here is a drawing of how I butcher doves. And I usually do this right after I shoot them in the field. It's up to you though.
Enjoy

springerDIVA

Start with the shotgun gauge of your choice. Leadby the perfect amount.Whack em and stack em until your limit's filled. Keep sub species separate. Ring Neck (Euro-trash) don't count intowards thelimit in TX. Put your thumb under the breast and pop it out. There's nothing else on them to eat.
Wrap in your favorite bacon with jalapeno grilled to perfection. They're great fried too with a little homemade gravy.

Less than 60 days now. It's like Christmas in September.

phishook

shot the first round of dove last fall. I just breasted them out.

I had some at a cook-out this spring that still had the breast plate, too hard to eat.

jghoffman12

best invention ever for cleaning doves, chuckar, quail, etc is KITCHEN SHEARS. buy some. they are the s*&(

duckkers

Dvoe are great eating. Don't taste much like chickento me. My fav recipe is to wrap a breast around a jalepeno pepper then wrap with bacon and throw it on a hot grill for about 5-7 minutes.

Another one is to take a casserole dish and fix up a stuffing mix, push the dove breast down into the stuffing mix and bake at 350 for 1 hour. Very tasty

rogerflat

I just pinch out some of the feathers between the base of their sternum and their groin. Then I make a small slit with my pocket knife. Next I grap the legs, tail feathers, and wings and then slide my thumb under the breast and try to rip the breast free from the lowerbody.Then I peal back the skin and feather and cut the muscle/tendon tissue that surrounds the wing/shoulder joint. You can twist those off at that point. The head and esophagus can be pulled right off and then all you do is pull off the feathers that are sticking to the meat and you should have a clean (albeit tiny) chunk of breast meat.

Btw, does anyone know why there is a small section of white meat attached to the breast bone? I think it is more tender and tasty than the dark meat personally.