I got to wondering about the statement by the hunter that started this
thread, i.e., that a pheasant has white meat on both breast and legs. (I
think that was more or less the original comment?)



I have eaten pheasant breast and, while not as dark as duck breast, it did
not seem as "white" as chicken breast. My experience with pheasant is
limited to once or twice and I don't remember whether I had leg meat. So, I
emailed a friend, Jean Grammer, who has been hunting and cooking a fair
amount of pheasant lately. She gave me permission to post her reply:



Hi Kelly,



Actually, I would say that the breast (flight muscle) and leg (walking
muscle) would both be dark as they are used in sustained activity which
means they need to have myoglobin which gives it the dark color (worked for
a muscle biochemist for 24 years :-)). And in cleaning the birds, the leg
and breast were the same color.





Jean



My further thoughts:



I disagree a bit with Jean; I don't think pheasants or most of the
gallinaceous birds, do much, if any, sustained flying.



However, It might be that pheasant breast is a bit lighter than pheasant
legs, but not so noticeably as in domestic chickens. Chickens have had a
few hundred, or thousand, generations of breeding designed to select for the
biggest, whitest breast meat. To further accentuate the difference, they
are kept in situations in which they don't have much opportunity to flap
their wings. (Or time. I think the typical meat chicken takes, what, a
couple of months or so to grow from chick to plastic-wrapped broiler hen?)
I have read that Russians call imported American chicken legs "Yankee
thighs" and that even the legs on the typical industrial-farm chicken are
"white" by their standards. The typical American chicken doesn't do much
running around these days.



So, the pheasants may have less myoglobin-enriched breast muscle than leg
muscle, but perhaps the difference may simply not be so starkly pronounced
as on a chicken or turkey.