Antelope good eating?
 

I hear Antelope is not good eating, some people say it taste like sage, any truth to this?

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

I have eaten antelope all my life and it is my favorite tasting game meat.
It will taste horrible if after you shoot it you treat it like a deer and let it "cure" for several days. You quater it up IMMEDIATELY and put it in a cooler with lots of ice. Then it is the most amazingly tender and tasty meat on the North American continent!

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

All I can say is that I tried it for my third time about a year ago."MY FIRST, MY LAST, AND MY ONLY''!!!!!!!!! Tasted like a damn old Grease-Wood bush.

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

I have to go along with J3 on this one, after you get that antelope, field dress is, and get the skin off as soon as you can, keep it cool and clean, and cut it as soon as you can. While i have never iced one down, i get to the cuttin as soon as possible. I have had antelope that was better than any elk or deer i have eaten.
I do think the closer you get one to agricultural country the better. [quote]ORIGINAL: OneEye

I hear Antelope is not good eating, some people say it taste like sage, any truth to this? [hr]

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

How was it field prepared? How soon was it butchered? It makes an amazing difference!

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

I don't have much experience having killed only one, but it tasted great. I cooled the meat ASAP, & of course, everyone knows that bow killed critters always taste better...[>:]:D[&:]

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

I have eaten a lot of pronghorn and I hope I can eat a lot more. It is one of my favorites.

Robin

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

Properly cared for, antelope meat is superb, perhaps even the best of the wild game. As others have said, you must skin it and cool it down immediately. If this is done, it has a delicate texture without the gamey flavor some deer have. If you treat it like you would a deer and delay skinning and cooling it down, it's as bad as a rutting buck. When in good antelope country, we literally drive around with a cooler full of ice with the goal of having the quarters on ice within 20-30 minutes of the animal hitting the ground. Try it, you will be favorably impressed.

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

I always heard the same thing about lopes and it kind of turned me off to hunting them, for awhile anyway. We (my group) does just as the above have stated, skin, quarter and get on ice. The meat is always excellent!

When I'm hunting in Wyoming I see lots of guys who will shot a lope early in the day and it's still in the back of his pickup at night while he is sipping barley, what a waste of fine flesh.

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

On a semi-related note I was talking with my buddy back in Wisconsin and he told me that another friend of ours was just cutting up his deer from rifle season. He shot a little 6 point a day or two before turkey day and it's been hung in his garage ever since. I had to ask him to repeat that to me since I must have heard him wrong, but I didn't. Kind of wondering how 2.5 months of aging will make that little buck taste, and how much of the meat is dried all the way through the skin.

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

Thats rough, I know a guy who had 2 deer hanging this year till they turned black, totaly digusting how some people are [:@]

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

Yes it is! I'm so completely anal about the game that I kill. Lots of time when I'm hunitng back in Wisconsin we cut up just about all of our deer together (2-6 guys) and sometimes I end up not doing mine when all the guys are around just because I won't stand for my meat being compromised. I have to tell you, my meat is always the best too.

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

Not to bad tasting, just cook it with lots of tomato sauce! ;)

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

Pronghorn is excellent meat. Good luck.

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

i had antelope roast once and it was great. I'd like to get my hands on some again but they closed the season in sask i believe. It was really tender and tasted great. I had that years ago when i was a kid but i still remember that taste.

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

It's one of my favorite meats. I can't remember having a bad antleope, and I have eat a few!!!!!

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

Personally I love antelope as table fair, but it really is essential to process asap like mentioned. I have prepared it many ways, but a roast just seasoned slow cooked or a bbq steak of loper is some fine dining IMHO. I think some people get the yuk taste when field dressing and if they process as lopes do have a strong smell but if we all ate by our nose many lovely dishes would be x'd;)

I also don't buy that sage taste thing, moose eats sticks/branches for god sakes and they don't taste like a diamond willow....all in your head & how it is cared for after the kill.

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

I agree with skeeter on the sage taste. Antelope on alfalfa fields taste the same as the ones that have been dining on different kinds of brush.

They also smell the same no matter what they've been eating.

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

I agree with wyote and skeeter, it is all in your head!

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

I agree, sounds gross, but when I was in Montana hunting elk, they had elk hind quarters hanging in the garage for weeks.. they let it hang until it gets all moldy, they say makes the meat really tender. Once the meat is covered with bacteria, they scrape it off and it's ready to eat..nice and tender they say. I have to admit, 2.5 months seems a little too long for me... [X(]

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

antelope is great as long as you take the advice of others in this thread

#1 dont run one before killing it
#2 skin it immediately
#3 quarter it and put it on ice (coolers work great)


just a side note if you are caping it for a mount do the best you can at cooling the hide down also as the tend to have a lot of slippage if you do not

Between my wife and myself we shoot and eat 6 speed goats a year

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

I would not say its the best eating game meat there is and by no means is it the worst, some are good tasting and some are just dang right strong, I am sure as previously said that it has to be properly cared for and get it in the cooler ASAP, but that goes with any game, "Is how its handled" before you freeze it. Sometimes hunters under estimate the heat on the priaries and at times it gets boiling hot in the afternoons and then at night your freezing you arses off. Did it this year. A lot of these ranchers beg hunters to shoot these lopes (lots of does and fawns) as they been eating his alpha he puts out for his cattle and they probaly won't make it through the winter and those are some pretty tasting ones if your wanting to pop some food, but if you want a trophy, the sage would be your better choice most of the time, I guess the same would apply to mulies, but get there quik cause they wise up fast. A lot depends on what they been eatin. You are what you eat.
Skeeter, I be waiting for those lopes on this side of the border when you miss as I'll be in the Sweetgrass area waiting for them just along the Alberta border.;) Good luck
Oneye, there is an ole timer that ages his meat the same way here and he wanted me to do it on my game this year as he has a restaurant and a cooler for me to hang it, it may be perkectly alright to do this as some actually do it, but I'll pass. I'll cool it 5-7 days and then its in the freeze. ;) Bobby

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

C'mon bobby you know better "I don't miss!!!":D Best of luck to yeah, not sure if I will put in for lopers this fall or not.

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

I rank antelope ahead of deer (muley or whitetail) but behind elk. I have seen one antelope out of about 30 killed in our family that wasn't good eating, in fact it was awful (an old buck, just missed B&C). I killed him in his bed and took good care of the meat, but it tastes like it has lime spread all over it.

I think one big key is how you hunt the things. Some people like to play WWII armored assault with antelope, chasing them in vehicles and shooting them on the run, and other such nonsense. I wouldn't be wild about eating an antelope that had been run around like that.

One little trick I have recently come on for "taming" my bad eater, is to slice up the steaks and soak them 24 hours in hard apple cider. Then pound, bread, and fry in olive oil. Makes that old buck taste like something in a fancy restaurant.

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

Skeeter, I knew that.;)

Dirt2, welcome to the board, there is some thruth in what your saying. I have heard of vihicles running down the lopes. Dughhhhhhh, I wonder why they taste like that. Good luck guys, Bobby

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

It might be an aquired taste.I shot a goat in the rut. The same nasty musky smell it reeked of was the same as the meat.
A little 2 strong for me. Maybe if shot at a different time of the season?
[:'(]

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

never shoot 'em during the rut! even a deer in the rut will taste like crap, elk too!

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

j3k2c1, about the only animal I have had that had a poor taste which was harvested during the rut is mule deer and caribou. The rest are AOK by me:)

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

I've heard people say it's fantastic or lousy, never just so-so. As for me, both of my goats were awful. (Yes, they were clean, fast kills, and they were skinned and in the coolere within an hour.) They were both sage fed and near the rut, so maybe that was a factor. Wish they tasted better, because I love hunting them.

RE: Antelope good eating?
 

Here I hunt mulies, so that would be deer to me.
But I have eaten a 3 bull elk shot in the rut and they were putrid, but we ate it all because we had shot them.
Teddy Roosevelt also agrees that elk in the rut are inedible. IF you read his book The Wilderness Hunter or Hunting Trips of a Ranchmen you find that he states that many times and quite clearly.