Title: "Gamey" Tasting Game, How To Fix- Part 1
Categories: Game Venison Info
Yield: 1 Servings

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The majority of game that tastes gamey, nasty, raunchy, sour or just plain awful does so for one of two reasons: you messed up in the process of picking a target or you didn't treat the meat properly after you killed it ~ sadly common outcomes among today's generation of sport hunters who kill for antlers and not for meat.

Pick and treat your meat properly in the first place, and you will not have any gaminess to worry about, nor will you need to disguise the fine taste of properly prepared venison with strong flavored marinades. Venison which is butchered quickly and professionally with a high standard of hygiene and care is comparable to the finest cuts of lean beef, and it has absolutely no gamey taste.

However, if you pick an animal to shoot that is not a good meat animal, for reasons of age, sex or rutting condition, you don't have anybody to blame save yourself if the results are not pleasant. If you shoot an old, tough, nasty buck in rutting condition because you want trophies, your dinner will taste crappy and you will have silly pointy things to hang on your wall and brag about. Enjoy your bragging rights and choke on your tough, testosterone-laden dinner, and don't say you weren't warned.

If you want to eat as opposed to rustically decorate your fireplace, eyeball out a young doe with a nice chunky brisket-shaped chest bespeaking plenty of fat. Look for graceful rounding in the hindquarters as well; you want fat hams, and the rump is where well-fed deer tend to put on padding.

Choose your target not for massive size or horned protruberances, but for a body conformation that indicates a plump, young, tasty meat animal. Read agricultural texts or butchering handbooks for better information on how to judge this, and study the pictures of cows, pigs and sheep carefully until you are confident that you know by the eye at least some of the characteristics that distinguish a fine meat animal from a poor one. Then go out hunting; your taste buds will be better pleased with the results.

Some folks say that wild game fat is rancid; I suspect that these are the trophy-hunting folks who want to go shooting aged, tough males for the dinner table. Silly people. If you must take bucks, take the spikes; an old animal is a tough animal. You wouldn't eat a cow that old, would you? Well, maybe you would, but my palate will take a pass, thanks. I'll take the plump young meat animals every time, preferably 18 months to 2 years old.

Fresh yellow-white fat from a well-marbled deer which has been grazing in somebody's cornfield is perfectly good food; the main danger here is eating too much of it and getting fatty deposits on your hindquarters your own self. ;P Check each carcass as you process it by frying a small portion of the fat and tasting it; individuals can vary. But don't chuck this lovely stuff until you have at least tried it.

Don't hunt in areas where the deer are known for desperate grazing habits; strong tasting fodder can and does affect the flesh. You'll figure it out if you shoot an otherwise good meat animal and it tastes like a pine pitch and mud marinade. Grouse is game that is famous for this problem in particular, but deer suffer from it too if they're browsing too much on scrub or tree bark. Get as quick a kill as you can, for mercy's sake and also for the meat's sake; an animal that dies in pain and fear is not as good eating as an animal that dies quick and clean.

So much for the hunting precautions. On to the butchering. Once you kill the animal, draw it as quickly as possible. Forget any silliness about cutting its throat; if you must finish it with a mercy stroke, use a brisket stick, thrusting your knife into the brisket at first a straight then an upward angle to sever the arteries around the heart. See a good butcher's handbook for pictures and information on the correct method of brisket sticking.

If you are not confident you can do an accurate brisket stick and the animal must be put down quickly, use a throat stab, not a throat slice. Insert (stab) the knife blade side facing outward as close to the animal's spine on the throat side as possible. Pull straight forward with a single swift move until everything from the front of the spine out to the throat is severed. This technique reliably severs a throat; slicing tends to be useless and unecessarily cruel if you do not have the strength or the expertise to do it properly. Often, an inexperienced hunter will miss one or both jugulars or cut insufficiently deep to bleed the animal out quickly using the slice technique. The stabbing technique essentially can't miss and it *removes* the throat from the spine out, also severing the windpipe.

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