Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Rigor mortis and tender steaks

Very interesting. Wyoming had/has a great meats program. WVU was lacking, and had just started it back after I spent a summer stripping the meats lab and cleaning it top to bottom. I always was curious if anyone was looking at game meat but never took the time in the card files to see.

I’ll admit I’m totally ignorant to anything other than whitetail, Bear, and the occasional coon. My experience with whitetail was probably more related to diet. The ones scrabbling in the clearcuts and ridge tops of WV were always tough. The ones that live off our beans and corn in Pennsylvania have by far been better......and the ones off a hound chase in the pine thickets of Virginia are the absolute toughest. Pack it in cow [bleep] and bake at 350 for a day, knock off the cow [bleep] and eat that.

We have hunted whitetails in 12 states and provinces in North America, in the West from Alberta, Canada down to Sonora, Mexico, and in he East from West Virginia to Iowa to Arkansas and Alabama. All have tasted good, even though they were shot both in the CNS and heart-lungs, but we none were chased with dogs. My friends in West Virginia say that deer eating white oak acorns taste better than those eating red oak acorns, but we don't have enough experience to say one way or the other.

As examples of lung-shot animals that were outstanding, two were the very best all-around eating of that species we've ever gotten. One was a mature but not old mule deer buck my wife shot with a .270 Winchester, near our little Montana town, and the other a 5x5 bull elk I killed on opening day of the Montana bow season in early September. There have been other mule deer and elk that were very good too, but those were so fine we tended to reserve their meat for special occasions.

Got a copy of “Slice of the Wild” for Christmas. Lots of good information and recipes in there.

And I just ordered a copy of it for the wife and me, along with Sausage Season and three of John's handloading books. I am looking forward to receiving them all!

I just killed a Coues Deer on the ridge up behind my house in Tucson three days ago. He's been hanging in the carport since, and I plan to butcher tomorrow. It got to over 60 on the day of the kill but has only gotten into the high 40's in the days since and it gets to freezing overnight. I skinned him immediately and have let him hang in just a loose sheet to keep off bugs overnight, and then I slip a cold sleeping bag around him in the morning to keep him cool through the day, remove it at sundown. He dropped instantly from a high shoulder shot, and all the whitetails I have been glassing since the season started two weeks ago have been eating barrel cactus fruit almost exclusively - I'm interested to see how that's going to taste. I have good hopes.

I drew a Nevada Pronghorn tag back in '94 and killed my buck on the first morning of a 5 day planned solo camping trip. It was too nice a country to come home to Las Vegas from so I did the sleeping bag trick then too (I had brought and extra with me). It would get into the 30's overnight and up to 70s in the day. Each evening, when I would get back to camp from my hiking and playing around with my .22 Hornet, etc, I'd go to the lone juniper I hung him in and slip my arm down into that sleeping bag around him before I pulled it off for the night. It would be so cold inside that mummy bag it was amazing. I boned him out on the last day of the trip and brought him home in a couple coolers - the meat was great. This trick might help folks in the early seasons out west where we get those 35-40 degree swings through the day - that's why I got so wordy on it.

Thanks for all the good information on this thread.
Rex

Rex,

Congratulations on the Coues buck! I have only eaten a few, but all have tasted very good (which overall seems to be true of most desert game).

Also sounds like perfect aging conditions, with the sleeping-bag technique. We have even used it here in Montana during the same sort of conditions.

Thanks for your order; it will be heading your way tomorrow.

John

For the last ten years or so I gut my deer right away and put the whole deer with hide on in a large stainless cooler. I have a shelf that keeps the deer off the bottom so it can’t sit in water or blood. I use several dozen half gal paper milk cartons of block ice on top of the deer, rotate them to freezer as needed. I keep a close eye on it to make sure temps are less than 36*.

After 10-14 days I’ll hang it, skin it, debone and vac seal. The meat stays clean and never gets wet or warm.

This has been the best way for me to have the most tender and tastiest venison.

We quarter our deer as fast as we can. It is rarely cool enough down here to let an animal hang. To damn hot in Texas!