Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Deer meat smells like rut

I suspect he was not kept cool enough at the processor especially before being skinned if he wasn't immediately skinned. Also, sometimes processors take in so many deer they hang very close together, for how long? In a confined room (cooler). They could absorb transferred smells from deer that were run, not cooled quickly etc.

Is it your deer? Hard to tell. Sometimes all deer are processed at the same time, especially ground. Mix up of which belongs to whom?

I remember a steer my parents raised for our own use. The fatted calf was shot, skinned, gutted and hung in very cold weather. We had to hang it in the unused milk house. It still was too cold. Stoked a coal fire in the wood burning stove. Not only was that damn thing on the tough side, but I swear it tasted of coal ashes. I could barely eat it. Of course all these years later my mother says it was my imagination, the meat was fine. I was glad to see the end of that critter.