Eileen and I have taken elk from early September to early December, mostly in Montana, though I have taken some (all except one mature bulls) in other places from New Mexico to northern British Columbia, and Eileen has gotten samples of other elk to experiment with. Like our friend E. Donnall Thomas (the editor of Traditional Bowhunter) we've found elk meat to vary more than any other big game animal, but do have some general observations.
Until October 1st even mature bulls are usually good, but get raunchy after that. By early November the flavor is OK, but the meat often need a LOT of aging to be chewable without various kinds of treatment. Eileen has been working on a cookbook about brines and marinades for game, and one of her "test subjects" was the last 6-point I killed in early November, which she tested enough to make the meat eat very well. (But in the process she's also found some common notions about marinades aren't true, which isn't unusual about common notions of any kind.) The biggest bull I've ever taken required three weeks of aging to make a difference in tenderness, but most people don't have the facilities to do it that long. Old cows usually taste OK, but may be tough, requiring the same sort of fixing.
But as Don and we have noted, there are all sorts of exceptions. I killed a middling 6x6 in mid-September one year with tender meat so BLAND we had to do stuff with it to make the taste interesting. But the best elk we've even had was an average 5-point taken on September 3rd, which was not only tender but had very fine flavor. Also killed a young cow in November one year that had a noticeable liverish flavor, even though it was killed cleanly and quickly field-dressed. Eileen tasted it more than I did, but I could taste it too.
But that's wild game. They're all individuals, unlike mass-produced domestic meat.
“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.” John Steinbeck
