See the “neck stroking” technique I commented on earlier. We never had any problems getting feathers out from the birds “plumping up”, because our chickens went to their maker dreaming... Never knew what hit ‘em.
The only problem I ever had was when I let my little 105lb wife talk me into letting her try to slaughter a 30lb tom turkey with a machete.
Admirably, she caught him, wrestled him over to the block, held him up, calmed him very nicely by stroking him with the machete.
Then, she made a 1/2-hearted swing, hit him with the flat of the blade and only cut his head 1/2 way off.
When I could stop laughing, I walked over and stopped the blooy wrestling match by grabbing its flopping head and yanking. To her credit, it didn’t scare her off of the chore, and she killed many other birds and even helped butcher a couple of hogs. It did scare the hell of my then 3yo son, though.
And yeah, you only dunk a dead bird. The hotter the water, the better.
“blooy” = bloody...