Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Mule deer or whitetail? Taste test.

Not in my book. Some of the deer we harvest are what I call the corn fiends and they are so fatty it is a chore to quarter them. The heavy yellow fat and tallow does nothing to improve the flavor for me. We have shot both bucks and does that had a heavy layer of fat all over and the meat was marbleized with fat too. If all the outer and inner fat was removed then these deer were good for grilling or braising or any cooking method that rendered out most of this fat. This is why I don't like shooting does as they are more likely to be like this, this is unfortunate as I should be shooting five does to every buck I take on most of the ranches I hunt.

Other than culling wounded deer and a couple of south Texas bucks that had been eating Cenizo almost all of the deer I have shot have been excellent if cared for and processed correctly which includes removing as much fat as possible.

Whitetail by a mile, muleys, blacktail are for sausage and pepperoni....

A mile? That's along way man...

Love the whitetail shag. Haha

I would add that, IMO, whitetails that eat a lot of waste grain, corn/milo/soybeans, are better tasting and more tender, due to more marbling, than whitetails that browse twigs and other lower protein foods.

I used to hunt whitetails in the Flint Hills of eastern Kansas where there was a lot sage in the pastures. The meat from those deer gave off a distinctive odor when cooked and had a stronger flavor any other deer that I recall.

I think the folks who turn up their nose @ antelope have been guilty of treating it the same they would a deer in Nov. @ 90+ degrees, wrap it up in a blue tarp with the hide on, strap it to the yuppie-rack stuck in the receiver hitch, spend another day and a half cruising gravel roads and infusing diesel smoke into the now rotting carcass under the blue plastic tarp.

I don't really notice a flavor difference between whitetail and mule deer, but, where I typically hunt, both are feeding in harvested grain fields or alfalfa for the most part.

Absolutely!!!!

I have had a lot of Whitetail, no Mule deer. East Texas deer tastes better than those from West Texas to us.

The only experience I have with mule deer is from W. Texas and the meat was far milder than a WV whitetail. At times a WV whitetail has a somewhat stronger taste due to the tannic acid in the acorns they eat, but that has never deterred me, a good cook (the Mrs.) knows how to get the "gamey" taste out of them.

I've heard this a lot, but the antelope I've eaten has been great and to be honest, I preferred it to the taste of a whitetail.

I prefer mule deer to white tails but doubt I could tell the difference in a side by side taste test.
Old dry does and cows eat the best, but I hate to take the lead out of the group.
I have never thought I could taste the sage from animals taken that were feeding on it.
I think antelope have more flavor, but just natural and not due to feed.
The yearling animals do not have enough flavor to match older ones.
Properly taken care of meat is way better than meat mishandled and prepped.
Tim

I can not, I think the reason why is the only times I've had mule deer meat was at elk camp, I was starving to death after all the mountain hopping, a fried armadillo with gravy and biscuits may have been just as tasty.

Taste like chicken,

I think the biggest cause for any "bad" tasting deer is poor performance by the hunter after the deer is shot. Unfortunately I don't get to shoot as much mule deer as whitetail, but I have both in the freezer right now and I would have a very difficult time determining which is which by taste.

When I was young, pickups were not common. The pickups that were around had little creature comforts, road like buck boards, were very low geared and generally were not considered hunting vehicles. Our '53 International pickup was crude by any way you wanted to measure it! Our '53 Oldsmobile 88 was very comfortable.Many hunters draped the deer they shot over a front fender of their car. The heat of the day and the heat of the engine would cause deer flavor to go south. I remember people saying that corn fed deer was best. Well the corn fed deer were next door. The prairie deer were across the state and mule deer were on the prairie, and not near the farm where I grew up. So, the corn fed deer tasted good. The grass fed deer, including mule deer tasted not so good. Carrying a deer 300 miles on the fender of the car was a much bigger factor then corn vs. grass or whitetail vs. mule deer, IMO.
I think that people have heard that corn fed deer taste best so many times from their fathers, uncles, grandfathers etc. that they have come to believe it. I do not. The deer in my freezer came from Eastern Wyoming and from the Black Hills of South Dakota and both taste great. I am confident neither tasted corn in their lifetime.

Bottom line, mule deer vs. whitetail both taste great.

+2

I don't like the taste of mule deer. That's why I only hunt elk.

Whitetail only in Ontario.

In my experience of having hunted mule deer most of my life here in Colorado and elsewhere in the Rockies, taste can be all over the board. One of the best tasting mulies was also one of the biggest I have ever taken, and that near the end of the rut.
The most reliable deer on the 'taste test' are the whitetails I now shoot on my farm along the Arkansas River. They are always within a short distance from corn, wheat, and alfalfa, and are always tasty and tender. I really think it's all about diet, all other things like field care, temperature, etc. being equal.

I have found that (in my opinion), that the best eating deer meat was mule and whitetail deer that live mostly on alfalfa, corn and beef crops. Also preferably not in the rut! I have tried the taste test on the different species and couldn't see much difference. The same goes for the elk. I haven't eaten an elk from the mountains in years!

Ken

Bighorn,

A few years ago my wife killed a pretty big mule deer buck toward the end of the rut here in Montana, on November 27th, the next to last day of the rifle season. He'd been rutting so hard there were only tiny traces of fat on his body, but he turned out to be one of the mildest-flavored, most tender mule deer bucks we've ever eaten. Oh, and he was in a wide sagebrush valley. You never know until you taste 'em....

I really think this is the defining difference between myth and what is real...