Gamey taste.

[elky McElkerson]

i was gonna jump in and just scream..it\'s improper care!!
but now some of you have me second guessing it. my last elk was yummy! we didnt do anything special with it. clean and cool for the most part.

so i dont know!!


but i read an interesting article about how americans have been conditioned to like the taste of meat that doesnt taste like meat anymore. apparently all meat \"back in the day\" tasted stonger (call it gamey). now modern eaters want the fat white, meat that perfect pink..and the flavor tame. they think lamb is gamey.

a lady killed a cow off of her mountain. she had some guy roll up, butcher it and wrap it up. she gave me some. the meat looked like wild game. yellow fat, dark mahagony colored flesh. she didnt like that batch because it ate too much something..maybe sage? alfalfa? i cant remember..but i do know i loved that meat. it was strong..concentrated beef flavor. almost gamey.

 

[OldMan]

I think a gamey taste is ok. After all it is game, but when it makes your eyes water. I have to step back.

I also have a tester living with me. If my dog won\'t eat it. I\'m pretty sure I won\'t like it either.

 

[iccyman001]

I\'m interested to go on my muley hunt this year now.

I\'ve never tried it, so I want to be able to relate to what you guys are saying.


worst case scenario I can just make it jerky or summer sausage.

 

[OldMan]

I\'ve read that canning is suppose to mellow out a gamey taste too. I know it makes any meat tender, and it doesn\'t have to be aged. Another advantage is it lasts forever, and needs no freezer. Oh, one more. The fat floats to the top of the jar, and you can just spoon it off.

I was thinking of doing it to bear meat. I need to buy a pressure canner.

 

[Swede]

I\'ve read that canning is suppose to mellow out a gamey taste too. I know it makes any meat tender, and it doesn\'t have to be aged. Another advantage is it lasts forever, and needs no freezer. Oh, one more. The fat floats to the top of the jar, and you can just spoon it off.

Mixed with a little Mayo or other spread, it can make excellent lunch meat for in camp or about anywhere else.

 

[iccyman001]

Canning does seem very interesting.
I think it would be very cool to be in the back country and cut open a can of something that you preserved yourself whether it\'s elk or deer.

 

[OldMan]

It\'s called canning, but it\'s done in mason jars. Easy to open, and would be great in camp, or even in a day pack like I do. Sure beats a peanut butter sammich.

 

[elkmtngear]

A trick I learned from an Outfitter...take the steaks, put them on a cutting board, and cover them with flour. Then, pound the flour right into the meat, until they are pounded out good and flat. Do it on both sides. Then, I dip them in an egg/water mixture, and coat with breadcrumbs (or, whatever). Flash fry them until medium (I poke them with a fork, and when the blood starts coming through, I flip them for a minute or so).

If you\'ve ever tried Snow Goose Breasts...you know they can be close to unpalatable. I did this with them, and they were eagerly devoured. I\'ve done this with deer, elk, ducks, etc...I usually serve them with brown gravy.

It\'s called canning, but it\'s done in mason jars. Easy to open, and would be great in camp, or even in a day pack like I do. Sure beats a peanut butter sammich.

Yeah Pete, the best black bear I ever ate was canned like that, using just water and salt. Amazing!

 

[cohunter14]

A lot of people love antelope. They taste like a mouthful of sage to me.

I think this definitely has a lot to do with where you shoot the antelope. Shoot them where there is no sage and they are great!

Lou, I had more questions for you on aging the meat, but I\'m going to start another thread on that. I would love to hear what others do as well.

 

[Jaquomo]

I must be missing something again. All the pronghorn I\'ve killed were sage antelope and I and my non-hunting wife and her family always rave about it.

I guess my decades of weekly dining in the best restaurants in the world dulled my taste buds...

 

[cnelk]

I dont eat hardly any beef so my red meat flavor taste is based on mostly big game.
I have to admit that we may be confusing each species of wild game with beef, and other wild game.

Here is my list of favorite big game tastes in order [ I inserted beef to show where I rank it]

1 - moose [by far]
2 - WT
3 - elk
Beef
4 - caribou
5 - antelope
6 - MD
7 - bear

 

[iccyman001]

I haven\'t tried all of those big game that you mentioned, so I will just go off of stuff I killed.

#1- Elk
#2- WT
#3-Quail
#4-Dove


I have also had an oryx steak before and it wouldn\'t even be fair if I put it on this list....

 

[Deertick]

Shoot them where there is no sage and they are great!

Couldn\'t disagree more.

I find pronghorn to be very delicate meat. Sweet, tender. I only shot one off of alfalfa, a yearling buck in NE. Worst antelope ever.

There is a concept that many fail to recognize in these conversations: Correlation does not imply causation.

Just because two things are temporally related (bad meat and high temperatures, for instance) doesn\'t imply causation AT ALL.

\"Hormones.\" Really? What evidence do you have that hormones cause meat to taste bad? Wait ... I\'ll go one more. If you think \"adrenaline\" causes meat to taste bad, you must think \"adrenaline\" tastes really bad. We\'re talking about micrograms of the stuff! Same with testosterone. Take ALL the testosterone from a rutting buck and weigh it ... it\'s like getting a little dust on the whole carcass. There isn\'t enough testosterone in the whole critter to fill up a little paper salt packet at Wendy\'s. OK, maybe I made that up, but still ... testosterone and adrenaline are not major components of blood.

Here\'s the deal: Fat makes meat taste better. That\'s what ranchers know. And that\'s why you\'ll hunt animals in August and September rather than January. That\'s it. That and proper aging.

It\'s not what they eat. What\'s more important is if they eat enough to get fat. \"Corn\" doesn\'t make beef taste good. Corn makes cattle fat, and fat makes them taste good. Corn is cheap calories, that\'s it. \"Sage eating\" critters might taste bad if they are starving. But if doing well, they\'ll eat as good as any other.

 

[Deertick]

I should qualify my statements about fat.

Subcutaneous fat in animals is bad-tasting. But visceral fat (fat in muscle, aka \"marbling\", fat in liver, etc.) is very good, and a wholly different tissue type.

Animals (and you) only get visceral fat from \"high times\" of over-consumption (think \"feedlot\" or grazing on green summer grass, or McDonalds for humans). So, it\'s excess calories (from whatever) that make critters taste good, and it\'s lean times that decrease quality. Feed them coffee beans and marshmallows if you want, but they won\'t taste like cappuccinos. They\'ll be as delicious as if they came off of good summer feed in the high country, though.

 

[OldMan]

Here\'s my list.

Bison
Moose
Elk
Beef

Not really a fan of anything else.


As for the antelope. If I could find any that wasn\'t in sage i\'d shoot it. I sort of gave up on them. If I don\'t like the meat I see no reason to kill them.

 

[Jaquomo]

My list:

Beef rib eye

Pork baby back ribs

Tie between mule deer, elk, pronghorn, fall bear, caribou (all have their own interesting flavors)

Whitetail and moose

 

[cohunter14]

Shoot them where there is no sage and they are great!

Couldn\'t disagree more.

I find pronghorn to be very delicate meat. Sweet, tender. I only shot one off of alfalfa, a yearling buck in NE. Worst antelope ever.

Interesting John. I am just going off of my experience. We used to hunt them in sage and they were not very good. You would literally cut them open and their insides would just wreak of sage. The area we hunt now has produced some very tasty antelope, and it\'s an area that has no sage at all. So again, I am just going off of my own experience there.

My rankings based on taste would be:

1a. Moose
1b. Elk
1c. Antelope
4. Mule Deer

 

[OldMan]

Deertick...........Questions.

Do you think a bear feeding on fish, or feeding at a dump will taste the same as a bear feeding on fruit in the fall when they\'re fat?

Do you think a mule deer feeding on sage will taste the same as one feeding on apples?

Do you think a mule deer who is shot, and falls dead on the spot will taste the same as one who runs for 2 miles, and is shot at again during those 2 miles?

Do you think a mule deer will taste the same during the rut in Nov, as one in Aug before hunting seasons start?

 

[Deertick]

Deertick...........Questions.

Do you think a bear feeding on fish, or feeding at a dump will taste the same as a bear feeding on fruit in the fall when they\'re fat?

My suspicion is that fish-eaters are the exception that proves the rule. Fish oils in humans lead to deposition of fat in subcutaneous fat deposits instead of visceral fat (marbling) which would be tastier. I think that\'s the more likely explanation for why fish-eating bears have a \"bad taste\" reputation.

 

[OldMan]

So, you think there would be no difference in the other examples?