1minute,
Yep, there is plenty of information in what is commonly called "meat science," but relatively few hunters ever read it, instead relying on hearsay from other hunters. I have heard from quite a few hunters that aging/hanging game doesn't do anything to the meat, because "deer and elk don't have the same chemicals" as beef. Which is BS.
In fact rigor mortis and aging also apply to gamebirds--which is why I eventually became puzzled about why so many Montana upland game hunters tore apart birds at the end of the day (which which had obviously gone into rigor by then), fried them up, and bitched about how tough they were. We take the innards out of both upland birds and waterfowl, then age them at least a week in a refrigerator (we have an extra in the garage).It makes a huge difference.
Perhaps the very best source for meat science on wild game is the Uniiversity of Wyoming:
https://www.uwyo.edu/anisci/facilities/meat-lab.htmlI learned about thaw-shortening 40 years ago, back when I was a wildlife biology student at the U. of Montana, when it was called "cold-shortening"--and you actually had read stuff in UM's "paper library", instead of surfing the Internet.
