whitetail, after the shot, how to handle meat？

Poor field dressing can occur any place field or at home! No need for a long hunting knife when you only use the first 2 inches greater chance of hitting guts or bladder. Decomposition starts as soon as the heart stops beating! Get the guts out, hide off, allow the blood to drain and meat to cool . A deer goes through hormonal changes throughout the year signal antler growth, velvet loss,summer/winter coat, and yes the RUT. Shoot a buck old or young in September and the taste will be vastly different than the same deer in November! A hunter can't do anything about that aspect "hormones" = GAMEY!
 
Just want to make another suggestion to the op if you pay someone butcher your deer or any game animal for that matter request to have the meat vacuum packed it makes a huge difference to the meat for prolong storage also make sure you rotate the meat in the freezer the first day or two because with the center pile will never freeze properly unless your butcher freeze them in their commercial freezer before hand.

If you butcher your own meat invest in a vacuum sealer if you don't have one ( or buy one for your wife for Christmas so you can process your game meat ) lol.
 
xingyc said:
I started hunting in the past two years, I find my whitetail meat is gamey and full of blood. Can someone share how to improve the taste of whitetail meat?

Here is how I handle my meat, after I shot my deer, usually I can get the deer in my car within 1 hour, and drive home in 1-2 hours. I don't gut or skin the deer because I am worried about contamination. After I get home I hang the deer, gut, skin, cut up the meat, remove most silver skins within 4-5 hours. the meat gets into freezer within 6-7 hours of the deer's death.

I think the meat is gamey due to the amount of blood in the meat, every time I take the meat out of the freezer, there are massive amount of blood after the meat defrosts in the fridge. how do you remove blood from your meat?
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You have to understand the process of aging meat. The idea is to have the muscle tissue break down enough to make the steaks tender. To do this properly, you must first remove as much blood from the muscle tissue as possible. This is why, right after the bolt gun hits them, they cut the throats on animals being butchered in a abattoir. So, the best way to minimize blood in the meat, is to shoot for the heart/ lungs. Also, you can cannot make bad meat taste good, no matter how you handle it. When the rut is on, some bucks will exhibit stronger rutting behavior than others. This means that they are not eating and drinking adequately, they are running at lot and building up lactic acid in their muscle tissue. When the liver gets overwhelmed with trying to process the acid, it gets changed to ketone bodies (chemicals similar to acetone, if I recall correctly). And this makes the meat taste like crap. I've had bucks that tasted awesome and I've had bucks that tasted "gamey" . It seems to be quit variable. I have never had a bad tasting doe or fawn.
The other aspect of aging meat is that it must go through rigor mortise and then the muscle tissue starts to break down making the meat tender. (taken to extremes, some beef is aged 50 days! ) When you cut up your deer after only 6 hours you are ensuring that the meat will not be as tender as it could be. Not a big deal though.
So , don't take head shots, don't shoot bucks during the rut, do get the skin off as soon as possible( in your case 1 -2 hours should be fine so long as you cool the meat right away), age the animal 7 days if possible. You culinary experience should be much improved.
 
chisholm said:
Get it cooled down ASAP, let it age. My deer doesn't head to the butcher shop for at least a week minimum. Your best beef is aged 28 days, not sure why guys are scared to let their deer hang awhile
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Because, among other reasons, Venison does not have the same enzymes in it as Beef, and hanging essentially makes for a bigger pile of trim on the butcher shop floor, for the same exact cost to cut.

I prefer to eat mine, rather than chuck it away.

Further to that, you can age beef wet or dry, but freezing it pretty much does a lot more for breaking down the cell structure. A decent dry aged steak has never seen a freezer.

Now, to the OP, gut where it lands.

If it's cool enough, leaving the hide on won't hurt, may even keep the carcass from drying out too much. If it's warm enough out to be not wearing a jacket (half retarded teen agers don't count!) the hide should really come off unless you are within a few minutes of a cold storage site that you can use. If you are that worried abut contamination, don't hunt the waste dumps! :)

In all seriousness, skin it on a clean tarp next to the car, drop in onto another clean tarp for the trip home.

When you gut, take a look around. Other than the tenderloins, there is bugger all really, that you can splash anything on to, that cannot be washed or trimmed away before processing.

Even a badly gut shot deer can be cleaned out with a hose before processing (but preferably as soon as possible after gutting, while still wet).
 
xingyc said:
I started hunting in the past two years, I find my whitetail meat is gamey and full of blood. Can someone share how to improve the taste of whitetail meat?

Here is how I handle my meat, after I shot my deer, usually I can get the deer in my car within 1 hour, and drive home in 1-2 hours. I don't gut or skin the deer because I am worried about contamination. After I get home I hang the deer, gut, skin, cut up the meat, remove most silver skins within 4-5 hours. the meat gets into freezer within 6-7 hours of the deer's death.

I think the meat is gamey due to the amount of blood in the meat, every time I take the meat out of the freezer, there are massive amount of blood after the meat defrosts in the fridge. how do you remove blood from your meat?
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You are ruining your meat by putting a whole, hot carcass into your warm car and not cooling it down for several hours. Get the skin off and the meat speperated from the guts asap. Proper cooling is one of the most neccessary steps in meat care. The way you are doing it now is virtually ensuring you will have poor meat.
 
We've taken many dozen deer in Saskatchewan seasons - anywhere from unusually warm +10 days to unusually cold minus 30. Always gutted the deer as soon as we got to it. Usually, we put the gutted deer in back of the 1/2 ton and skinned it that night, hanging in the garage. After struggled to skin some that seemed thoroughly frozen after most of the day in the truck, on bitter cold days we would get back to town about noon and get the skin off before it froze so bad. Even if the skin was solidly frozen on legs, it is unbelievable how much heat/steam came off the "hams". Many times those deer were froze virtually solid the next morning hanging in unheated garage. I've done my own butchering for many years - put a heater in garage to get it up to plus 10 if possible to get carcass thawed out, then trim all fat and connective tissue as we went through it. Almost always have fluid on the floor as the carcass thaws out. It really works better if the deer can hang at least a day without freezing, though. I don't think anything is "aging" or "tenderizing" once it freezes while hanging, although it is obviously losing moisture. We believe getting it cooled down and bled out by getting the guts out, and then trimming all fat and connective tissue makes for the best taste that the meat can be.
 
Field dress it right away; Drain all the blood, wipe out the carcass with paper towel. Your 'full of blood' issue is now solved.

Contamination will more likely occur from NOT field dressing it right away. You can't have the warm guts of a deer that has just had a hole punched through it marinating for several hours. That itself can spoil your taste and start contamination. If you are worried about cleanliness hose it out and pat it dry when you can. When you skin it, cut out the wound channels thoroughly.

re: Gamey. Venison, like beef, is improved with some aging. Hang (age) it for at least a couple days, if the temperature allows it (below 8 degrees); If not, age it in a fridge (NOT freezer) for a minimum of several days. This alone will improve the taste of your meat substantially.

Happy hunting!
 
If you want most of blood gone hang head down at least over night, you would be surprised how much is on ground , veins and artery so are still full after gutting!
 
Stop scaring the guy. Let me get this straight, if your deer/elk/moose isn't skinned, gutted, and hanging in a cooler within 4 hours it is ruined? I'll take his venison every day over dirty meat that has been hosed off.

Blood coming out of meat is normal, why do you think the store puts a maxi pad in packag meat?
 
I have yet to have a gamey taste. I gut and skin within a couple of hours. Hang for a bit depending on temperature. Always works out fine for me and I am no expert (ie. 5 home deer in 3 years).
 
MiG25 said:
Stop scaring the guy. Let me get this straight, if your deer/elk/moose isn't skinned, gutted, and hanging in a cooler within 4 hours it is ruined? I'll take his venison every day over dirty meat that has been hosed off.

Blood coming out of meat is normal, why do you think the store puts a maxi pad in packag meat?
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So you and him are the only ones not gutting in the field. And the rest of us are wrong?

OK.
 
blasted_saber said:
So you and him are the only ones not gutting in the field. And the rest of us are wrong?

OK.
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Make that three but I'm not saying you are wrong to do it in the field. I don't. I haul it home and hang it off the tractor, peel the hide, hose it then peel the guts and hose again. I can only hunt around home because of work - can't get away for a few days so have to hunt close by. If I could go off someplace elseI guess I would have to field dress then :eek:
 
I bone every deer out completely. Been cutting my own for 34 years. Make sure you remove all the fat and silver skin. Deer fat is nasty stuff and will give you that distinctive tallowy wild taste. Trim used for ground and sausage is equally important with regard to the no fat rule. Most bucks are pretty lean but I've cut does that had 2 inches of fat in some locations.
 
I usually do the gutless method, and have doen so for many years. You can have a deer skinned and cut up into parts within 30 minutes. My buddy and I (both experienced with a knife have done deer together in 12 minutes, and moose in less than 45 minutes. This ensures your meat is cooling down as rapidly as possible.

The need for rapid removal of the hide hit home a number of years ago for me. My buddy shot a moose on the top of a ridge, in the afternoon in November at reasonably high elevation. We got to work and did the gutless method and laid the parts out on top backpacked out a quarter each that night, then went bacl the next morning with a couple more guys to get the rest. A bit of snow had fallen, and the cut up meat was nice and cold. We had just tossed the head aside the day before, but we decided to remove the antlers from the head to pack them out. When I cut off the hide on the head, underneath the skin was still very warm. This was a moose head seperated from the rest of the body, so not much mass to keep it warm. It had been over 12 hours in cold weather and the head was still warm!

I have heard some hunters say that it's a point of pride to recover thier moose and deliver it whole to the butcher after the hunting trip, I always roll my eyes and think how thier meat is sub par.

Get that skin off, get it cooling. When I was a chef, I toured many food operations. Slaughterhouses didn't kill the cow and then leave it hanging whole with the hide on. Hide was off a couple of minutes after death. Part of that is just to be efficient, but it's also about not having your meat steam under a fur coat.
 
Which do you guy think is cooled to the bone sooner a moose quarter or a deer that the OP says he has butchered and in the freezer within 6-7 hours of the shot?

I really think it is counter productive to field dress a deer and then drag it out. If the knifes are coming out what Gatehouse describes is the way to go. If I can't drag my deer out whole it is what I do to pack it out, no point in packing the hide and spine out.

My advice to the OP is to keep doing what he is doing but to get an old fridge (usually free for the hauling away) and age the meat in it for 5-10 days before final buthering and freezing.
 
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MiG25 said:
if your deer/elk/moose isn't skinned, gutted, and hanging in a cooler within 4 hours it is ruined?
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nobody said it was ruined, just not as good as it can be. the OP was complaining about a "gamey" taste, so people are suggesting how to minimize that. Sometimes animials aren't recovered until the next day. Certainly not ruinied, but not as good of a quality as it could be. A bit of dirt and leaves inside the chest cavity sure isn't going to to hurt any of the edible parts, so I'm not sure what that concern is.
 
The gutless method IMHO is the lazy way out and wastes to much of the animal for me to consider doing it for an animal I took for meat...but that's just 2 cents worth on the subject.
 
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