My burger is absolutley disgusting!

As others have suggested it's most likely the fat, or possibly contamination from glands etc. When we do moose up north, we trim all the fat and use pork fat in our hamburger. Moose fat can occaisionally be okay, but more often than not, it tastes really nasty, even to die-hard wild game lovers. Caribou fat - same thing. If the fat content in the burger all came from the deer itself, pretty much guaranteed that's the problem.
 
fat and bone leave strong taste in deer meat

For my first couple of deer, I was sending them to a butcher that was trimming and cutting the meat as if it was beef, I mean fat around a steak from beef is good but leave a strong taste when left on deer meat. Same for hamburg, the fat, tendons, scrap piece, etc from the animal will leave strong taste in your burger and lots of butchers will prepare meat that way. A piece of bone will also overrun the taste of your steak/chops, and to be honest, I didn't like the taste of it and was giving it to friends, family etc.

Then, give a deer steak with fat to your neighbour and tell him "Deer meat is really good" and ask him to give his opinion on it. Chances are he will never try it again, same for burger meat, if full of crap will taste like ..well, crap.

Today, when I butcher, there is no fat, nore bone in the meat I get. All my meat is prepare boneless and fat free and taste really good, a whole world of difference.
 
"...destined for the sausage machine..." That's not going to make it taste better if, like it sounds, the meat has gone bad. Ground meat goes bad faster than non-ground. Don't feed it to your dog either. Use it for bear bait. Yogi likes his meat gamey.
 
Won't hurt a healthy dog, dogs are immune to e coli, and salmonella.
Parasites on the other hand would be a concern, as well as contamination from machinery oil etc.
 
I agree on the trimmings. My deer always tasted a little gamey to me, but not bad. Then I learned about bear fat. The hard way :D ooooh my god, as much as deer fat can affect the taste of the meat, bear fat will turn it putrid. Want to get information out of a particularly tough prisoner? Make him eat cooked bear fat. He'll fess up to avoid another mouthful.

So I trimmed my bear meat meticulously and lo and behold - delicious. So i've started doing that with my deer, and it's made a major improvement.

Strangely - i'm told by Gatehouse (who aught to know) that RENDERED fat from bear etc is actually a delicasy and is used to make pastries. Something about the rendering process changes it.

BTW - there's a difference between 'fat' and the connective tissues that hold meat together. That stuff is fine. It's just the fat you want gone.
 
Then I learned about bear fat. The hard way :D ooooh my god,

Same here, I shot a blacky last spring, cooked a piece (steak) and almost puke after the first bite :eek::runaway:, didn't had the courage to try it again since, probably because of the fat. I might try it again after trimming all fat and cooked as a rost in the slow cooker but geee, otherwise, I don't know, very strong taste indeed.
 
Yup. Like the others say, the meat for your burger should be as clean as everything else, it's just too small to be labelled stew or whatever. It's sure not going to get any better in sausage.

And it's true about bear fat, the first bear I got rendered out 9 gallons of clear bear grease, suitable for deep frying doughnuts. I used it for boot grease and we even put it on our newborn baby's bum for diaper rash cream.

Must have survived, she's got two of her own now.
 
I feed my dog raw food for the past 5 years. Never had a problem, and the vet always comments on what great shape he's in. I feed my cat raw stuff as well.
 
I might try it again after trimming all fat and cooked as a rost in the slow cooker but geee, otherwise, I don't know, very strong taste indeed.

I love bear roast in the slow cooker. :) But - ALL fat must go.
 
If it tastes like s**t now, why waste the time & energy to make sausage that tastes like s**t?:jerkit:

X2 all you will end up with is crappy tasteing sausage.
Next time when you butcher up a deer take your time to remove all the fat, sinue, and blue membrane even from the burger pile! You will be rewarded with the best gourmet burger on the planet. Or you can do nothing and hope for the best but end up with a plie of crap. To me proper butchering is part of the job! proper shot placement, proper field dressing and proper butchering. If you can't do it you have no right even shooting an animal!!! IMHO
 
Was going to make summer sausages this year anyway, so I was planning on putting it all into that. They will match what I give them with pork. Im hoping the spices and smoking etc will kill some of the taste.
 
Was going to make summer sausages this year anyway, so I was planning on putting it all into that. They will match what I give them with pork. Im hoping the spices and smoking etc will kill some of the taste.

Dude - it won't kill some of the taste, it'll still taste like crap. You can't mix crap with meat 50/50 and have it taste anything different than crap. :)

There is no good reason for burger to taste one inch less good than the rest of the meat unless something was thrown in with it or something was wrong with the grinder (oil or something). So SOMETHING is in there which shouldn't be and mixing it with more meat won't help.
 
Johnny C Canuck made a good point with tallow, I thought we'd have a nice meal of BBQ'd venison ribs one nite a few yrs back, well as soon as they cool off...blahhh, I may as well as chewed on my daughters crayolas. I also shot a whitetail doe..'98 I believe, well while I gutted her i was startled by the 'young fawn' who had just come outta the bushes....Damn..I felt terrible, I squeezed a teet and milk ran out...was I ticked at myself!! Well waste not right? So that nite I fried up the t-loins and they tasted alright, then when we had our 1st meal of steak we could've swore it tasted like mower clippings, a bad grassy taste! So, like mentioned on here allready, i took the rest of the meat to the butcher and had peperoni's made...they taste fine.
So what tasted like poop at 1st, turned into yummy pepperettes!
 
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While I'm about the 2nd worst cook in the world (I'm sure there is such a thing as a worse cook than me somewhere .... ) maybe you should try lowering the heat a bit to let the fat melt, then drain it all. Should take care of <some> of the bad taste .... Or you can try a liberal dose of spices to mask the foul taste.
 
meat

Simple solution is throw it away!!! I never serve or eat something that tasts bad. You'll gross yourself out and the people who you feed it to will lose their trust and quit eating your game. I agree with the others, it's not been handled properly. Was it frozen and thawed before grinding? This isn't much of a problem usually, but it has to be thawed properly (under refrigeration)

Any ground meat is extremely perishable.

the chef
 
I agree, toss it! If you have to disguise a $hitty flavour just to down it, then it's not worth your expense, dogs, coyotes & crows on the other hand could care less, feed it to them.
 
Try mixing it with pork? Prepare one burger w/ the pork and cook up something else as well.

That way if it still tastes like crap, well, you've got something else to eat!
 
Why all this talk of throwing it away? Save it up and give it to the guy you know who always sponges your meat off you. You must know the guy. Probably complains about hunters, but is always first in line for a Moose steak in the summer.

Well, I have it on good authority that he would love the rest of your deer burger. It should be the last time he mooches off you. ;)

Another thought is to send it surface mail via Khazbekistan to Stephane Dion. No need to waste good money on having it air mailed or couriered.

;)
 
Haha, I like your idea even better Glyn. Fellow CGN "Hakx" & I know the perfect person. He's all talk about hunting, buying all the gear & kit he'll need for a good hunt, such as a Coleman 2 burner and a Coleman coffee maker, WTF? He's what you'd call a "kit wh*re". Has all the kit but has every excuse as to why he can't go out and hunt, but when you bag a deer or two and mention your making pepperoni he's all over that opne, he'll even offer to pay for half! Yup, he can have all the crappy burger to his fat hearts content.
Oh yeah, he's also a CFN here but no names, no pack drill!!
 
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