Venison has always been our main table fare. It's all in the processing and a good start is a clean kill. Cooling the carcass down immediatley by gutting and skinning is what I try to do.
After he's dressed I wash the carcass down good and will keep it on ice and water in a large ice chest. Drain the water out daily and retop with ice and water until the water runs clear.
The butchering is where a lot of folk mess up in my opinion. Get all the tallow, nerve, and membrane off. . . .if it ain't red meat, get rid of it.
I go a little overboard wrapping for the freezer. I vacum seal mine and then double wrap it in freezer paper. Tastes good from one season to the next and folks are glad to take it when we clean the freezer out for the new meat coming in.

I do something similar to you leaf. As soon as we can get it hung up we get all the meat off ourselves, we gut it in the field as early as we can after the deer has expired. I also put the meat into a large cooler with ice but i dont add water, i simply cover all meat with salt just once when I place the meat in the cooler then cover with ice. Drain every day for 3-4 days while keeping the ice lvl up and after that process to my liking. I can guarantee any of you, you couldnt tell the difference between my meat and store bought beef!

i think some people are just used to store bought food, and they just think different and gamey are same word, i think deer taste like deer, duck like duck, hog is a lil different than farm kept, but these guys are not sittin in their own feces havin food brought to them , they are out gathering their own food, which to me makes it a better way to eat.

I have a little trouble understanding why people would want to put the venison in ice. Is any quality meat ever put in ice by professional butchers?? I doubt it. I know in some warm climates people might be afraid of spoilage, but I can't see how putting meat in ice (which is water) can be a good thing. I would think the moisture would surely have some negative effects. Adding salt wouldn't make much sense either. Why salt the meat before you even package it?? I think in warm climates it would be best to cut it up and package it as soon as possible if a cooler where the carcass could hang is not available. The less exposure the meat has to foreign elements such as warm air, water, salt, dirt the better I would think.