When to eat deer meat.
 

So I heard the other day, for the first time, that if you kill a deer early in the season, or before it gets cold, that you should keep the meat in the fridge for at least a year before eating it due to the parasites that are attached to the deer and could transmit disease and junk to the deer blood stream. Is there any truth to that or what?

Never heard that. Indians ate deer all year long. I'd think cooking the meat thoroughly would kill off any bugs.

I've eaten bowkills, fresh, as early as the middle of September, and pig meat fresh-killed in July.

I'd say just cook it properly.

lmao... i have never heard such a thing and certainly have never waited a year to eat the meat of an early season deer.

i hope someone with some hard factual info chims in to this

The parasites you are talking about are there all year long. If you will talk to your butcher guy, he'll tell you that he will let that deer hang in the cooler for atleast 48-72 hours. That takes care of all that. He will let the hide stay on the animal during this time and the parasite will go to the hide. This is always done, if your butcher is worth his salt he'll let'em hang for a little. This has been told to me from numerous butchers and advised.

Neh! I don't listen to the hub-ub! True or not? I don't know. If it looks healthy and the meat looks/smells good, I don't hesitate!
By the way, welcome to H-NET. Where do ya' hail from?

And that's a very short stay in the cooler for beef!

cant be near as bad as that crap you buy at the grocery store.

Graham, North Carolina

You heard wrong...

What do these people think the settlers ate during the summer months when they had no refrigeration??? How about the Native Americans???

I've eaten deer meat for over 50 years, never had any problems...

The first piece that gets eaten is the tenderloin, often from the deer to the skillet...

I have never heard of that one.

Most processing places want deer with the hide left on the deer. The reason is most people end up getting a lot of hair on the meat when they skin it themselves. The processing places use a hide puller to pull the hide off the deer.

When they do beef, I bet they don't quarter or halve the beef with the hide on it. Beef is killed, gutted, skinned, halved or quartered and hung to cool and age.

Reasons for hanging meat is to let the meat cool, age and tenderize. In the first few hours, the meat will get tougher. However, as the meat hangs and ages, the muscle tissue changes due to bacteria; and the meat becomes more tender. Aged meat will also have a different flavor.

I would not eat anything that had been in the fridge for a year.

If you cook it obviously the heat will kill anything thats on or in it..

Ask a near by processor get his opinion.

if it aint gone kill ya, eat it.

Never heard of this and I'm not worried, imho. I used to cut up a couple hundred deer a year. The only reason anything had to hang in the cooler, is we didn't have to man power to cut it up faster. Meat will age just as well in a bucket as it will on the body (At the right temperature, meaning NOT frozen). And aging is way different than curing.

Actually, we didn't like them to hang. Venison being so lean, drys up so easy. And now that I think about it, by the time a deer hit my cutting table, it was usually days old anyway. It was unusual, even for me, to get a deer back to the shop in less than 2 days. So right there is your "aging" time.

Also, skinning a fresh one is a different sport than one hanging for a week and frozen. A 5 minute job with warm hands becomes a 20 job with frozen fingers. We didn't care if it was skinned or not when it got to the shop because all the deer got torched to burn off excess hair anyway.

Cutting up a fresh kill versus a frozen is again, no comparison.

And finally, eating a fresh kill is to die for.... :) I love cooking up a whole loin that marinated overnight or backstraps with my eggs. We always shoot one in the first two weeks of bow and eat it all season. It's a great tradition.

Every hunter should butcher one deer in their life. It's a wealth of knowledge and a great part of the journey.

Sorry for being long winded on this one....

Sounds more like trichinosis?? They suggest you freeze meat that could contain trichinosis for a while OR cook well done before consuming, but this usually pertains to animals that eat carrion, like bears, hogs, or mountain lions.

Never heard of that. I eat my deer meat all year long with no issues. The wife said she doesn't like deer so I just tell her its beef....

ive never heard of freezing meat to kill parasites, just the opposite. If you are worried about something in the meat then pressure cook it first then cook and not only will it be super tender but will kill anything possibly living in it.

As to the hanging meat to let it cure, i wondered about that as well (if aging deer would make for tastier meat). Seems like i read somewhere that because deer is so lean, the aging process actually hurts the taste of the meat (versus beef where there is a lot of fat in the meat, the aging tenderizes it and improves the taste).

Always ate . . .
 

the liver the same or next day.
I guess according to the hunter chefs, I should be dead decades ago.

For a long time, I thought everybody did. And fried slices of heart.

When I was a kid the old guys would not hunt rabbits until a good frost to "Kill the worms". When I trapped nobody started until hides were prime. I was told it was because of insect eggs in the hides. I don't know that I believe either one, but that is how rumors start.

Not sure about that, but as a rule I won't hunt them til' snow hits so they won't have as many fleas!
As far as fur not being prime, I never heard of the insect eggs. I always assumed that prime fur is just the thick winter coat!
Awe man, now I'm gettin the trappin' bug too! Time to start boiling traps!!:woot:

I've been a professional chef for 25 years and have never heard of this.
Getting it to the fridge quick is to cool down the meat so that bacteria does not begin to grow and spoil some of your meat.
Most wild game does not need to hang for any specific time as there is not the same ammount of connective tissue as in beef. So a day or two is plenty for hanging. I process my own venison and I find it much easier to work with if the meat is well cooled and firmed up.
As far as early season vs late season, you will find perhaps a difference in flavour mainly due to diet and fat content.
Hope this helps.

What ? Have eaten deer for 60+ years .... never heard of such. All I do is get my deer meat cleaned and cooled off ASAP. Never waited a year to chomp into a good deer steak ???? Heck many, many time have cooked back strap steaks or fried up some liver strips within a few hours of the kill ... and I am still here :).

Wow...that is absurd. Not sure who told you that but, they were talking out their...

A fur pelt from an animal that was killed before the fur was prime will have a tendency for the pelt to lose part of the fur over time. It is possible for an animal to have a winter coat but for the fur not to be prime. After a period of cold weather for that region, the fur will become prime on a live animal.

Yep, you probably shouldn't hunt till it gets cold enough. :biggrin:

I don't know how much weather has to do with a prime fur. Time of year or moon phase maybe. We knew when to put traps out by skin color. Even with the season open we would not start right away. I always would check a road killed coon. Put a slit on the back and peel it a little. Should be reddish pink, not blue on the inside.

Haven't ever heard that one. The deer we kill is what we eat from the previous season. For example, we are currently on the deer from the 2011 deer season.

maperry1,
When I lived in Alaska, I once heard a biologist suggest that if folks wanted to eat the salmon and halibut they caught raw (sushi style), he recommended the following:
1. Process the fish. Gut, fillet or whatever
2. Freeze the meat solid for a minimum of three days
3. Then thaw, cut and eat with no worries.

He was of the mind that three days frozen solid would be sufficient to kill any nasties (tapeworm and others) that might be in the flesh of freshly caught fish.

Maybe the person that shared their knowledge with you was thinking along these lines. However, one year?????? I'm thinking they are taking a good thing too far!!!

Fact - I've eaten the loin and heart the day of harvest for over 35 yrs and i'm alive and never gotten sick.

I was raised on outlawed deer and homegrown chicken, didnt matter if it was middle of the summer or dead of winter, if the freezer was slim we went hunting. Always cut fresh steaks so that mom could fix dinner while the deer was being processed. If we had beef or ham growing up I thought it was a holiday.

only on days ending in Y

I've only heard about keeping it in the freezer for 4-6 months before making jerky - because you typically don't "cook" jerky. The temps don't get high enough to kill the bad bacteria. But if you're really cooking it - I will typically eat the loins the day I kill the deer.