ORIGINAL: jaybe

We used to have a friend - - well, she's still a friend - - but she claimed she didn't like venison. Once when their family was at our house, my wife fixed "beef" stroganoff with venison. Being a gracious guest, the lady didn't refuse the food that was passed to her, but she just took a small portion, thinking it might be venison. After sampling it, she smiled and said, "Oh, good. I was afraid you might have made it with venison; this is really good!"
We let her eat it and take seconds before we told her it WAS venison.
We have found this to be true of a number of people who have tried venison that was poorly handled after the shot. If you took a prime beef cow, dragged it through the swamp and then hung it in partial shade in a tree with the skin on for a week, I doubt many people would enjoy the taste of it either.
We have also found that when you remove the meat from the bones rather than cutting through the bones dragging the marrow across the meat it makes a big difference. Also cutting as much fat and "silver skin" off as possible helps a great deal. That's our humble opinion, and a lot of former "venison dislikers" would agree.