Petasux is right about the mishandling of the carcass after the kill. I too have seen deer being dragged at 30 mph a half mile across a field. I guess it would have been too difficult to put that deer ON the 4-wheeler, might get some blood on the custom paint.

I have helped my boy process two deer thet were shot in the evening and not found until the next day. Both were well shot and died within seconds of being hit but dropped in tall grass. This happend two days in a row. Both days they wondered how they didn't step on the deer during the search. The temperature was in the thirties and the deer were found easily the next day.

There was a funky odor to the meat, not a spoiled or rotten odor mind you, but off or sour. Not being field dressed quickly, body heat was trapped and the carcasses did not cool off. The meat was still edible, not bad eating really, we just noticed the odd smell during butchering and not later when the meat was cold during food prep.

This experience has made me believe that if a deer is not recovered in good edible condition, any rack should be inelligable for the record book. I see too many experts on the TV double lung a deer with an arrow and then back out for the night even though they can confirm the hit with the video. They were complaining about the heat in the stand so the temperature was not in the thirties like the deer I helped butcher. How much of that meat do you think got consumed??? I saw a rack that a guy took credit for when it wasn't found for a year. What bull.

About silver skin- I have found that removing as much as you can from solid meat helps when it comes time to eat it but that it does not affect the flavor of the meat so we do not worry about it in the trim pile that gets ground. Again, we take out ALL of the deer fat (tallow). If you need fat for the gound meat use beef trimmings or pork trimmings. We use beef fat because we can get it for 75 cents a pound, pork fat is the same price as sausage or about 2 dollars a pound. (that is because hogs are so lean now and all of the fat normally goes into the sausage so they sell it for the price of sausage)

Bob