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

I agree with sage brush adding an offensive taste to some people.

Around here they are both delicious if killed before the rut, I will take the Mule deer if they are 2pt or smaller 4pt
It can be challenging to eat a steak from a big 4pt Mulie in the rut,, and the gravey dont help much, lol

I have never had bad whitetail and I have had a LOT of bad mule deer, in fact, I won't even shoot a mulie anymore. They gotta be 200" bucks before I even give them a second glance.

I agree with the comment about Sitka blacktail being the best too. I still guide a lot of mule deer hunts and I can't stand the smell of these "stinky deer".

There is no comparison, at least in Arizona.

Dennis,

Are the Arizona mule deer in the rut? What are they eating?

Have hunted both Coues and mule deer in Sonora, where they tend to occupy very different kinds of habitat. Despite that, the meat of both was excellent. But the hunts were early in the rut, when bucks of both species were far from worn down.

Not a big venison fan here, never tasted a better wild meat than water buffalo which is like a very strong beef with a darker meat, but Aussies never bring much venison back to camp as it won't keep in the weather and the coolers are primarily for beer and maybe some butter.
Not being a cook of any persuasion if it doesn't impress on a flat iron on an open fire it doesn't usually go much further. Just a different upbringing in a different climate.

Something most won't know, taking wild game is/was/maybe still is illegal over there as butchering any meat for human consumption is required to be done in a licensed abattoir. Naturally, there is no law enforcement for this, nor any DNR or anything else.

I think the mule deer rut much harder than the whitetails. I was hunting a few years ago and had a 190" muley 'challenge' me repeatedly. I never even nocked an arrow. Our coues deer are still a little more timid during the rut and I think they eat more. The last 'trophy' mule deer I killed was in '97 and it was so rank that the dog would not even eat the meat. That was the final straw. I had two sets of hunters give me meat sticks made from mule deer. The package was labeled 'Broadus MT' so I am assuming they killed the bucks in Montana. The sticks were so gamey that I had a running joke with my dog. I would ask her if she wanted some mule deer. She knew exactly what that meant; going to the fridge to get a meat stick as a treat as I couldn't stand the smell of them.

I think they are eating a lot of cliffrose and other aromatic browse in Dec/January.

The coues deer we killed in Mexico last year were delicious. We were only able to sneak a small amount of meat home but it was great. I know quite a few hard-core coues deer hunters like me that will no longer hunt mule deer. To me they smell worse than a rutting bull elk and that is saying something.

I ate a LOT of game meat last year and in order from best to worst, I would rank it as follows:

1) Dall sheep
2)Eland
3) Moose
3)Sitka blacktail
4)Gembok & Impala
5)Virginia whitetail
6)Coues whitetail
7)Kudu
8) everything else with Mule deer and warthog being at the bottom of the list.

The big mule deer we have killed in mid September have been decent but not great. About a half dozen of those that have been between 5 and 9 years old. We have killed 2 bucks recently in mid November that were in the same age class. One was 202" , and the other was 187" both were rutting hard. The meat of both was boned out and well taken care of, and was literally unedible. It was so strong that nobody, ( or the dog) wanted to eat it. The rutting white tail bucks I have eaten have been much better, although not like does. But I love hunting big mule deer, so I will just have to endure.

I'm really surprised by dennis' take o mule deer. I've never run across a bad one out here, and we kill them in full rut as well. As a matter of fact my buddy dropped a big 5.5 yr old 180 class typical last week, rutted up and a bit smelly, and the backstraps were delicious, as they always are out here. Maybe it's what they eat, not sure.

JG,

I am surprised as well, but have also had several people from southwestern Idaho say mule deer there can be bad-tasting as well, even if not rutting. Can only guess, as you do, that it's something they eat.

The only "deer" I've heard of that dogs won't eat are rutting caribou bulls, but that seems to be the consensus no matter where they're hunting. Have never encountered that myself, as all the caribou hunts I've made, from Alaska to Quebec, were from mid-August to mid-September, before the rut, sometimes before they shed their velvet.

I assure you this is a real phenomenon and not my imagination. Mule deer taken during our August archery hunt, at least the ones NOT from the desert are just fine to eat. I might even try a piece of jerky from the late October hunt but after that and especially in January they are flat nasty. Maybe it is just a regional thing but that mule deer given me by some caribou hunters last summer that was from Montana was pretty rank as well.

Oh, I believe you. We have had an occasional rutty, mature mule deer buck that was definitely affected--though not to the point where the meat was inedible if prepared correctly, or made into sausage.

The rut also tends to last longer in more southern mule deer, and the drier conditions might result in the meat being more affected because there isn't as much nutrition in mid-winter vegetation. Dunno, but do know the 190+ buck I killed in Sonora in January tasted fine.

Mentioned in an earlier post on this thread that a few years ago Eileen killed a mature mule deer buck on the second-to-last day of the season, I believe the 27th of November that year. (The rifle season goes through the Sunday after Thanksgiving.) It was so rutted-out there were only tiny specks of fat on its body, and we thought it might be inedible. But it turned out to be really mild-tasting, and tender, quite a surprise. I am guessing it was already recovering from the rut, and while it was taken in a wide sagebrush valley, Montana mule deer don't normally resort of eating sage until winter, and there were some irrigated hayfields nearby, which both species of deer flock to as the fall gets colder.

The most inedible deer I've ever killed was a very big fallow buck taken during the rut. Dunno if a dog wouldn't have eaten it, but we sure didn't. Fallow bucks have that reputation, though the does are very fine eating.

Have also taken several axis deer in rut, and they are always excellent eating. But like other tropical deer, the rut is very lengthy and not nearly as "hard" as that of northern deer. In fact axis they breed all year round in Texas, though there's a summer peak.

Having shot quite a few mule deer near Broadus, including one last month, and also having eaten more than my share of jerky and sausages from Broadus Meats, I can vouch 100% for Dennis. Some are worse, even much worse, than others, but rutting muleys to me pale in comparison to whitetails when it comes to eating. And I know from experience that virtually all that jerky and sausage is from rutting muley bucks that guys bring in and "trade" for processed stuff. That meat has to go somewhere.

Many years ago, I once paid to have a rutty muley buck processed. Never again. It got to where we wouldn't even cook the stuff indoors, it stank up the house so much, and it was hard to gag down.

The muley from last month was not terrible, but not great either. I canned the meat, and that seems to help some.

The shooter whitetail bucks I ran into this year were on private, river-bottom land only. It's not easy to make the call to tag a whitetail doe with a $1000 non-res big game combo tag.

To add: I deliberately make the decision to time my trip to coincide with prime rut dates, so i get what I deserve in that regard. Virtually all my experience in tagging/eating Montana bucks over the years has been smack dab in the middle of the rut, so I know I am apt to get the stinky ones.

Rick,

Yep, we have yet to get an off-flavored whitetail buck even when they're taken during the peak of the rut, whether in Montana or elsewhere. And I have taken hard-rutting whitetails in many other places, from Old Mexico to Canada, including several eastern states and provinces. Dunno why their flavor doesn't deteriorate during the rut like mule deer, but there it is

Of course, one of the other factors in buying sausage or jerky from a processor is that quite often the trim-scraps that that get thrown into the grinder are often from a bunch of deer, not the hunter's. Many suffer from poor field care, so the rut may not be the only factor--which is one reason we make all our own sausage and jerky. One guy we know does venison-cooking workshops,. He says that maybe 25% of the deer meat he's been brought as "samples" for workshops is actually fit to cook, particularly in states where seasons take place in warmer weather. But a lot of the deer have also obviously been gut-shot, or had the guts punctured during field-dressing.

When Eileen was writing SLICE OF THE WILD, her big-game cookbook that includes everything from field care to recipes, we decided to take a couple of our deer to local processorsrecommended by friends, because we never had before, and she needed to know what might happen. One of them did not follow Eileen's directions for the cuts on her deer, though the meat was fine and we're pretty sure it was the young mule deer buck she' taken. But the meat we got back from the other processor was obviously not from my deer, another young mule deer buck, because some packages included small chunks of sagebrush. Obviously the processor hadn't made sure the meat was clean, but I'd also killed my buck in the middle of a lodgepole pine thicket up in the mountains, far from any sagebrush.

John:

Yep, when you "trade" they can give you processed meat immediately, assuming you are ready to pay up, and so it is clearly not your buck. I tend to visit Broadus Meats at least every other day in the evening after dark just to see what is coming in. And you are right, it is amazing the condition some of those bucks are in well before the butcher can get to them.

For years guys regularly would "donate" the meat to the Indian reservation, and I remember the fee being something like $40. A few years back they had changed policy and even if you donated you had to pay the entire processing fee.

I canned my buck this year, and all things considered, it was the best move.

I will not be canning my next whitetail buck!

I had no idea that some processors offer the trade meat deal? Really not surprising it sucks.

Although you know many places throw yours right in with everybody else's when they grind it up, but they claim you'll get your own back....

Rather than run the risk taking somebody else's in trade, I'd just as soon donate the deer and buy beef.

Once in my life, I stopped by a meat processor on a Monday morning at the peak of hunting season and after seeing the chit(deer and elk) that was hanging and being delivered by hunters, was the end for me of ever thinking of using a processor to cut up my game. Not the processor's fault either, it was what he had to work with that was disturbing.

+1 on that. Good thread! We just did a taste test about week ago between Oregon mule deer that lived mostly on alfalfa fields and was a young deer compared to the antelopes I shot in Wyoming. Side by side I can't say I could tell one from the other, but I think I do prefer the texture of the antelope more. Just dang good stuff!! And I have had some bad mule deer on occasion but don't think I've ever had bad antelope, at least not from Wyoming

Elk is the best deer...

This thread inspired me to fire up the grill last night and serve grilled antelope steaks for Christmas Eve dinner. The family loved it. I'm glad I listened to those here (and my neighbor) who knew better than everyone else who claims antelope are the worst.

Excellent, excellent table fare.

Im convinced the Hybrid doe is the best tasting animal I have ever eaten.
Might have something to do with the fact that it was shot in MT with a rifle paid for by a summer of hard work, with good friends made far from home, by my son who did the entire thing all by himself. Both of his sisters agree, so that must eliminate the possibility of a placebo effect......