Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Meat Quality: Whitetail vs Mulie

The big difference I've noticed is mature mule deer bucks SOMETIMES get raunchy during the rut, and whitetails normally don't, but even then there are exceptions. My wife killed a big 3x3 mule deer on the Saturday after Thanksgiving a few years ago, so rutted-out there were only a few tiny specks of fat left on his meat. We though he'd be gamey and maybe tough as well, but after aging a week the meat was mild and tender.

If a rutty muley is gamey, the taste tends to concentrate in the connective tissue. Often the bigger cuts taste fine, but the stew and burger aren't as good, and get gamier as they spend more time in the freezer.

Also, over-cooking tends to make any wild game taste gamier. The surest way to make the meat of many big game animals and dark-meated birds taste like liver is cook it too much, but a lot of people do exactly that. Some kinds of game are more tolerant of such abuse, which is why some people think those animals always taste better, but the cooking technique's at fault, not the meat.

Have killed plenty of mature mule deer bucks before the rut and cannot remember one that wasn't very good, and indistinguishable from good whitetail. But here in Montana the regular rifle season goes through the rut, and most people don't kill larger bucks until they're rut-stupid, whereupon they complain about how mule deer taste gamey.

Have also heard about how mule deer from sagebrush country don't taste good, but have killed plenty and before the rut never found any significant difference in taste. As a result, tend to believe something else is going on, whether the bucks are killed in the rut or over-cooked--which as mentioned above tends to exaggerate some flavors.

These opinions also aren't just those of me and my wife, but come from the many people whom we've served both kinds of deer (and other kinds of big game). More than a few have even commented on how good "young" deer taste during the meal, and are astonished when I show them a photo of the big muley buck they just ate.

At one time I would have sworn I liked whitetail better, then sort of evolved to where I preferred mule-deer. With the benefit of hind sight, I've now concluded that it was more the individual animals and where they were taken and when. With many years of abundant non trophy tags for both species I've come to believe that the best eating are whatever healthy yearlings I found and that beyond that I'm not even sure I can tell the difference anymore.

Thanks for all the feedback regarding the Axis deer. Sounds like pretty good table fare. If the Montana deer hunt falls through,I'll give the Axis hunt a whirl.

As for whitetail or mule deer? Here in the Idaho Panhandle, I prefer mule deer. They both live in the same mountains, no crop fed deer here. Its just that the mule deer have more meat on them bones. A mature mulie will fill the freezer up quicker.

I've killed and eaten old mule deer taken before the rut and they aren't bad although I do taste more of a sage flavor. The whitetails where I hunt in TN are largely stick eaters (no ag crops around but we get some good mast crops every few years) and they taste good to me but maybe because that's what I'm used to. The bucks I've killed in IL post rut were not noticeably better than the buck here even though they came from the largest corn crop there may be. Oddly some of the best whitetail bucks I've eaten were ones I've killed in South Dakota during the rut and their diet was largely grass-no ag in the areas I hunted.

The best game I've eaten was a caribou bull I shot in Quebec pre rut but most every one I have talked to says rutting caribou are terrible to eat.

Here in n.e. Wa., cattle, mule, whitetail, elk, and moose all in the same hills eating the same stuff. Very slight difference, all very good. Get a run down rutted out animal of any kind and quality suffers.

Most of my whitetail a have come from agricultural areas, where as most mule deer have come from the mountains or plains.

I've had some really good mule deer, including a 6.5 year old buck killed in early November.

That said, a yearling whitetail doe taken from my usual spot is about as good as meat gets and has absolutely no wild taste.

Can't say about muleys, but since I've started cutting up all my deer myself, I've never had a stinky one, even bucks that were really smelly from the rut. Commercial cutters use power saws that smear marrow and tallow over everything and often aren't too picky about what goes in the grinder. I butcher with knives, trim away as much sinew and fat as I can, and vaccuum pack. Burger meat is chunked, frozen, and then thawed and ground as needed. Except for what gets braised or put in chili, or stir-fried, I cook it quick in a little butter and oil with salt and pepper until the pink starts to seep out. Good stuff.

Shot 'em both. Eaten both. Never could tell the difference. My take is field care makes the difference. Last DEC in CO I shot a mulie doe and a whitetail doe and you can't tell one from the other when you pull a package out of the freezer.

I hunt mule deer and whitetails in eastern Colorado and western Kansas every year, both buck and doe. I cannot tell any difference between the meat of the deer killed in sandhill sagebrush and that from cropland areas.

I myself prefer the taste of the whitetails, but the difference is small and very subjective. This year I killed a very large rutting whitetail buck. There is zero gaminess to his meat. On the other hand, mule deer bucks with even a little bit of swollen neck will have an off smell and some slight gamey taste. Not much, but enough to tell the difference. I actually think it's more of a perception of smell than taste. Both are excellent. The only bad-tasting deer I ever had was a immature yearling mule deer buck. Mountain mulies have a distinct flavor that sets them apart from plains deer. Not bad, just different.

My preference when meat hunting remains with the plains whitetails of either sex. Next best are dry mulie does. Mule deer bucks and wet does come in last ... but not so much as to pass on a good shot. I wouldn't make my choice of tags based solely on the meat ... and I'm a meat hunter first and foremost.

Feed can make a big difference. Years ago my brother and I shot 2 mulie does. High mountains, in snow, we skinned them immediately and got them cooled. We did it all by the book. They were both inedible. The meat was too strong to eat. It stunk up the kitchen when cooking. Even my garbage gut lab wouldn't eat it, literally. We ended up throwing it all away. There was something they'd been eating that gave it a horrible taste and smell.

Bob H;
Good morning to you sir, I trust this first Saturday of the second month of the year finds you and yours well.

This is, as you can imagine, a hotly debated topic most anywhere folks who hunt and eat venison gather to discuss table fare, so for whatever it's worth here's our observations.

I grew up eating Saskatchewan moose with a smattering of whitetail thrown into the mix, the whitetails added when we were first married and still on the farm there.

Since moving to the BC interior we've eaten local mulie and whitetail bucks as well as local moose, elk and Columbia Blacktail from the BC coastal area as well as Sitka Blacktail from what was then called the Queen Charlottes.

Overall it's our impression that the less stress caused by seasonal conditions an animal experiences, the more tender it's meat is. That's a broad statement to be sure and there's been exceptions too, but that's what we've found.

So the Sitka deer on the Charlottes never have winter really and maintain good body condition year round. They're grand eating in our experience.

Likewise the Blacktail from our coast seldom see snow or any lack of good forage to speak of and were pretty tasty to us.

Locally the whitetail we hunt most never see an agricultural field and early in season one would be hard pressed to tell the difference between a steak from a whitetail or mulie buck of similar age class taken from the same mountain.

We have noted a few interesting trends in flavor, such as mulie bucks from a valley to the west have a bit more of a tangy flavor - perhaps more sage up there? We're not sure.

There's been a couple instances where we've noticed a bit more gamey flavor in late season mulie bucks than whitetails in the rut, but it's certainly not the case in all or even most of them.

Lastly, we used to cook up side by side steaks from whitetail and mulies to see if anyone could tell the difference and nobody who we did the test with ever could - not once.

Anyway sir, hopefully that was useful to you or someone out there. Good luck on your hunts this fall and good eating afterward.

Dwayne

That is why I used "tend."

I agree with Travis. I have a hard time telling the difference if the elk or mule deer are shot in the high country. Here in the lemhi valley however the mule deer seem to smell stronger than the whitetail. I also find the grainy almost liver like grainy ness of elk or mule deer less palatable than white tail. Since I started canning the meat I doubt any one could really tell the difference. Women seem to have a more discerning palate. However the local land owners certainly more inclined to give permission to harvest elk or mule deer. The whitetail are more highly regarded as table fare.

Mule deer by a landslide!

When I was on the faculty at Kansas State University, one of my graduate students studied whitetail deer diets and energy relationships on Fort Riley. The post was in the middle of typical east Kansas farm country, surrounded by farms. The perimeter and the broad "buffer zone" around the artillery impact area were farmed as well by contract farmers. In addition, the officer in charge of the wildlife program on the fort was an avid quail hunter and there were food plots scattered around the fort everywhere-I would guess that there were a dozen or more 2-acre plots per section.

The deer were large and healthy. Does that weighed in excess of 200 lbs live weight were the norm and some approached 300 lbs. Bucks were also very large, both in body mass and antler size. Everyone you asked said that the deer got large and fat on the corn, milo soybeans and wheat that were present in abundance.

We collected ten animals each month for intensive analyses. We did this for two years. Since this was the army, we could make everyone who harvested a deer during the fall hunts bring their deer to our check station, whole. We dressed their deer and took blood, rumen and other samples from each animal. Like everyone else, we expected to find that these animals were living the white-tailed deer equivalent of the "life of Riley".

Briefly, these animals were absolutely the healthiest group of white-tailed deer that I had the opportunity to study. Disease and internal parasites were nonexistent. As winter approached, they had all put on enough body fat that, energetically speaking, they literally did not have to eat another bite until sometime in the last half of April. The surprise came when we looked at the contents of the foodstuffs in the rumen samples.

We rarely encountered any of the domestic crops raised on or around the fort in rumen samples. When we did see them, they were less than one percent of the total--usually much less. Virtually all of their diet was comprised on native plants along with a few introduced things (mostly ornamentals that were growing wild).

Since we were collecting ten animals a month, we usually kept some venison to see if there was any variation in palatability from season to season and there was actually very little. Around the first half of April, when they were burning the last of their winter fat reserves and starting to eat the first things that were greening up, you could say that there was a slight loss of palatability, but I don't think that most hunters would even notice the difference if they weren't looking for it.

Around here, we have mule deer that pretty much live in the corn and alfalfa pivots for nine months out of the year. Since I don't hunt them, I can't say whether they are physiologically different from the ones that live in the nearby mountains and foothills. However, I can say that the little Coues whitetails up in the mountains are much more palatable than mule deer taken in the same habitats. My family as a whole usually ends up with a few of each every year, so we have ample opportunity to make comparisons.

Well, Having eaten all I would say Blacktails are the best

From my experience mulies and whitetails in general taste about the same and both taste better than antelope.

Some have told me how good antelope taste but I have yet to find that the case.

Art

You are certainly not the first person I have heard say that. Several other people whom I also value their opinion have told me the same thing.

What I am wondering, what do you think these Sitkas eat that gives them such good flavor or does the good taste come from some other factor?

I also have heard Sitka is delicious. Why?