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Thanks for sharing your butchering and cleaning method, sound as good as any, and better than some.
On cooking, 350 for 3 hours roasting would be too much. 350 would be too much. Another member suggested 275 to 300ish for about 2.5 - 3 hours, which I agree with. Cooking a middle aged to older bird at a normal cooking temp seldom turns out well. A few tell me they have all tender birds, no matter how old they are, and say they don't do anything special, but that's never worked for me.
Any old beast or bird will eventually get tender in the crock pot, especially if you cook on low. It may take 12-24 hours, but it'll happen. And they'll be very tasty. Mine only get buried under a stone in the garden if they die of old age without my help.
I strongly believe in giving thanks to/for any animal you kill for food. I always do it.
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Have you ever cooked any older birds? If the bird has been free-ranged, like mine, and you cook at normal cooking temps just until you reach the safe temp on the thermometer, there's a high probability the bird will be very tough.
Have you ever cooked a bird with the oil glands intact, so that you know firsthand whether it makes a difference? It certainly won't hurt to remove them, and I usually do, they're not anything most people would chose to eat. But it really isn't a big deal if you forget. On a duck, I couldn't say, I haven't yet butchered a duck, so I don't know.
I respect your training at culinary school, but it's not unusual for a mistaken belief to be common, and this thing about the oil glands is one, as far as tainting the meat goes. That said, the chefs are mainly teaching how to cook to please even the fussiest of clientele in high dollar restaurants, and in that setting, you definitely would remove the oil glands, just as you would take care to remove pin feathers. It wouldn't do to have customers getting upset or grossed when they encounter something they aren't familiar with. So I can see why they would stress the importance of removing the oil glands, even if they know it's not really anything harmful.
I don't cook by either by time or the temperature of the meat. I cook it until it's tender, and if I'm roasting it, until it's tender and the skin is well browned, and has achieved that shift into the marvelous aroma that develops when caramelization occurs. I like 275-300F for this, in a clay chicken cooker. The older the bird, the lower the temp.
