I WAS WONDERING HOW MANY HUNTERS WHO ARE HUNTING TO FILL THERE FREEZERS LOOK AT THE ANIMALS CONFORMATION AND CONDITIONING BEFORE HARVESTING AND HOW MANY DO NOT.

AS A CHEF I LOOK FOR THE BEST TASTING ANIMAL THAT I CAN FIND BEFORE SHOOTING. I HAVE PASSED UP MANY ANIMALS BECAUSE THEY DID NOT HAVE THE CHARACTERISTICS THAT I LOOK FOR IN A ANIMAL.

I LOOK FOR A STURDY FRAME, WELL MUSSLED ANIMAL. THE HIND QUARTER SHOULD BE BALANCED WITHOUT THE ABUNDANCE OF FAT. I LOOK TO SEE THE TOP PORTION OF THE RIBS. THERE SHOULD BE A VERY MINIMAL PILLOWING EFFECT IN THE STOMACH AREA. I DO NOT LIKE FAT DEER.

CALL ME CRAZY I JUST FEEL LIKE THIS CRITERIA HAS PLACED FAR ABOVE EXCELLENT VENISON ON MY TABLE.

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS. DOES ANYONE KNOW IF THERE HAS EVER BEEN A STANDARD WRITTEN TO CHARACTERIZE DEER?

HUNT ON HUNT HARD EAT WELL

You do not like fat deer? Do you mean a deer with fat? For some reason the deer in Florida are very lean. No marbling at all. Maybe I should go hunt in another state so I can get one with some fat in it.

Does anybody know where I can go for one of those?

FOOLPROOF?
Never underestimate the power of a fool!

What if the "Hokey Pokey" really is what it's all about?

Great question.

I've never heard of anything written on the subject you talk about but there was a guy from New Jersey at Rutgers University by the name of Dr. Lacandro who also worked for fish and game there. He was a professor of Meat Science at Rutgers.

I met him once about 22 years ago and he may be retired by now.

I've hunted and cooked my venison for years and I'll tell you there are many different effects the environment and how you take your deer can change the taste of your deer.

When a deer is killed totally by surprise the meat will not have any adrenaline in it and thus a better tasting deer. I did read an article about this fact many years ago in one of the popular magazines (Sports Afield, Outdoor Life or Field and Stream). I did kill a doe like this once that was feeding also on a lot of corn. I was walking down the corn rows one by one and there she was laying right in one of the rows, I could tell she was a healthy deer and shot once with 00 buck. The deer didn't move, just her head dropped to the ground and that was it. A pellet had hit her brain. Well I'll tell you that that was the best tasting deer I've ever had. Tender and sweet.

As far as fat she had a lot of it but deer fat is not marbled in the meat and fat deer or skinny all you do is separate the fat from the outside portions of the meat and there you have it, fresh lean venison. I've also killed other deer that had been feeding on a lot of corn and when cutting chops from the loin area left a little of the fat on. These deer tasted a lot like beef and some people that I prepared them for could not tell the difference and thought that they were eating beef.

That is the beauty of this meat. The fat is not in the meat. It collects on the out side of the meat.

Also Venison as compared to Beef, where fat is marbled into the meat, will not turn to sugar in your body after you eat it. This is why venison is so much better for you than beef.

I've also shot a winter bow season deer with absolutely no fat on it at all and took the ribs which are usually layered, fat-meat-fat-meat, and took all the meat off the bones and ground it up like hamburger. It was so tender and so sweet that I named and you heard it here first, BAMBURGER!!!!

Another thing about deer is the preparation of the meat and deer can be aged like beef unlike bear which had to be cut as soon as possible for the longer it hangs the tougher and dryer it gets. You can hang your venison for up to 5 weeks just like beef and the longer you hang it the tenderer it gets. Tempuratures should be a steady 40 degrees F when hanging.

I know these things because I hunted for years and butchered and prepared my own meat all that time. My mother and father both cooked because we had 10 kids in the family. My Mother was a chef in her own right and I also have a brother who works for the Hyatt in New Brunswick, New Jersey as one of their best Chefs. We all learned how to cook watching Ma do her thing in the kitchen.

If you catch the deer live and do bit of massaging you may be able to get a tenderer cut that way. This may be a difficult job though but would be well worth it.


GOOD LUCK AND BON APPETITE






GOD BLESS
Charlie Patrick
Eastern Ontario Guided Adventures http://www3.sympatico.ca/chazpat/wildcanada.html


Edited by - droptine on 11/18/2002 04:25:32

Nice job Drop Tine. I strongly agree that enviornment and food source effect the taste of the deer meat. It also effects the smell ofthe meat. Most of the deer I kill have been in my orchard June, July, August and eat thousands of apples. I and my butcher when I use him , for trophy caping and sasuage can smell the apples in the deer meat and you can sure taste it, very sweet meat. Ones that are tracked for long distances do get a funny taste from the adrenilin in the meat. Also I was at the butcher last year being taught the finer points of cutting up the deer and he was working on a deer from a SWAMP habitat and it smelled like skunk cabbage or swamp mud. The butcher says it will not eat well either. ECH stew mwat..

Last but not least get use to eating deer very rere and it is always juicy and tender!!! Striper Phil ONE SHOT ONE KILL

More opinion from me like As111hol11 we all have them.

Gee, I can see your point but I ain't shopping for meat...I'm a proponent of "Kill first sort out later"...

Maybe if they had those nifty little "see through" packages or better yet the grade stamped on their sides...

Just kiddin....I have let "scrubby" lookin critters go...One doe had a large football sized mass growing out of her brisket. On another occasion I let one slip by that had all of the hair missin off her back..some sort of mange I reckon....

~Will Hunt For Food~

I posted on this topic the first thread so I won't repeat. But I will add something else.

Many variables affect the taste of venison. Some people confuse "gamey" with "tainted" taste. Venison improperly cared for will begin to "spoil", which is not the same as gamey or tainted. And gamey is not the same as tainted.

The gamey taste associated with some venison primarily comes from the deers diet or lack thereof as when bucks are rutting and begin using their fat reserves. A friend offered me a small backstrap roast from a doe he took in Michigans' UP. It smelled and tasted like pine needles.

Tainted is exactly that. I have had hunters describe the taste of venison which had been liver shot as being "different". Which it is. During the time it takes for this shot deer to expire, the blood becomes tainted and what circulates supplies the heart first and the muscles next. The same applies to stomach or gut shots with the longer the animal lives, the more tainted the blood and meat becomes.

And lastly spoiled. Even though there may not be the associated rotten smell, the bacteria level begins rising in all meats the very second the blood stops circulating that causes spoilage. This is where improper handling, storage and processing causes this effect. The time between death and getting the meat cooled to 36-38 F has the greatest impact.

I have a 12x12' cooler that I allow deer to hang for 24 hours, remove the tenderloins and then allow another 2-3 weeks to age. I cut and wrap the meat in the cooler and it goes directly to the freezer. Not yet have I experienced spoiled venison.

As for fat, every deer has it, but it is easily stripped away leaving the most lean and tasty meat on the planet. And I agree with Striper Phil - rarer the better.



Shoot often - Hunt always

this post has been some good reading. i also have a walk in cooler but have not been able to use it yet. i seemes that i have stuck all my deer this year on away hunts so what i do is skin, quarter and put in a cooler for a few days draining the water off a couple of times. it seems to work prety good.
i have never tried to judge the tast of the meat before the shot it is kinda like running with the ball before you catch it. if the deer looks and acts normal i shoot.

I guess that the quality of the meat is more important to me that any thing else. I mean come on, if a 30 point buck walked in on me he has to go, no question, but why should we not judge the quality of our kills. Who knows better than us? We get closer, we generally see more deer, etc. I just feel it is something to think about>

hunt on hunt hard eat well

Passed (2x) on a nice 8pt - not huge but still nice buck this weekend.

He looked kind of skinny (I could see his hip bones & the beginnings of his ribs). All of the other deer on this property are big & fat bodied deer. I passed because I was afraid that he was sick.

There is corn, alfalfa & soybeans galore (along with modern suburbias various gardens) for this guy to enjoy and eat. Something just didn't seem right.

So I guess that I do look at the deers condition before I harvest.

&quot;It's not the kill, it's the adventure and challenge! <img src=icon_smile_big.gif border=0 align=middle>&quot;

since i have almost no expirience compared to some other people here then i must say, this is something that i need to think about a little. maybe not too much but i think it will enter my mind. I didnt shoot one buck saturday because of he was kind of skinny and small. I think i will need to remember to see if i can find a correlation between taste appearrence in the future

propmahn
save the world, reload your brass