The objective of the research study was to evaluate the carcass composition and meat quality of 16-week-old male and female meat pheasants (P. colchicus colchicus) reared using an intensive breeding system. The research study comprised 80 common pheasants, which were penned in a confined space throughout the entire experiment. The birds were fed ad libitum complete commercial diets for meat pheasants in accordance with the breeding instructions. After a 16 week rearing period, 16 males and 16 females with the body weight close to the mean weight of each sex were selected for slaughter. At the age of 16 weeks, the males were characterized by a significantly (p ≤ 0.01) higher weight of: body (1251.4 g), eviscerated carcass with neck (870.9 g), and giblets (46.7 g) compared to the females (903.7, 628.9 and 37.9 g, respectively). The dressing percentage values of the 16-week-old male and female pheasants were alike and equalled to 69.6 %. The leg muscle percentage in eviscerated carcass of the males was significantly higher (25.2 %) than that of the females (23.7 %). The sex of the birds had no significant effect on the pH₁₅ value, L*, a* and b* colour coordinates, fatty acid profile, nor on the percent rate of Na, K, Zn, Mg, Ca and Fe in the breast and leg muscles of the pheasants aged 16 weeks. The percent rate of unsaturated fatty acids (UFA) in the muscle lipids of the birds studied was higher than that of the saturated fatty acids (SFA). The breast muscles contained more UFA than the leg muscles.