Mine didn't ... did you take proper care of the carcass after the kill? Meat has a strong smell to it, anyway .. but it shouldn't smell bad or sour...
Everyone hits gut sometimes. Most of the meat shouldn't be affected if it is cleaned thoroughly. One thing to remember however is to keep your knife clean, otherwise, everything it touches will be transferred to the meat you want to keep. Also don't put clean meat on the same surface, tubs etc... as the contaminated meat without thoroughly re-cleaning it.
I threw out half a deer worth of meet last season because I didn't know any better. I had a guy tell me that if you gut shot a deer the back half wasn't any good. Come to find out, if I would have just kept it seperate and cleaned it real well, I would have had a good bit more meet from that one. I was not very happy after I found that out. I shot it at 100 yards with a 1oz slug. When it hit the ribs on the entry it turned almost a complete 90 and took out the guts. I wish I would have known that when I cleaned the deer.
I shot the spike earlier in the year and the arrow went into the ib cage and came out through one of the quarters, it was a complete mess, the other qaurter was covered in it. The deer was shot at 4 and recovered at 8 the next morning. The temp was roughly 60 degrees. I only kept the front legs the straps and some neck meat from the deer. I did absalutly everything I could to keep from contaminating meat. (it was hard to walk away from the quarters but they were that messy with a hole all the way through one filled with it) Anyway the meat I did process from it does not smell sour or as if rotten, it smells more like liver. The deer around here are very wild and do not feed on any farm sources of food such as corn or alfalfa ect... they live in the deep woods so there meat is already pretty strong smelling, this deers meat smells quit a bit stronger though. It has sort of the same smell as any other deer here would just very extrem. So much so that it is a little bothersom. I talked to my father about it who has hunted his whole life and actually before I even mentioned the smell and told him I hit the guts he informed me the meat will probably smell stronger. He believes the meat is still fine and it's a normal effect of a gut shot deer... I should also mention that rigamortus had set in by the time I recovered it. I'm not sure how long that takes. Any butchers or any one with expierince in this, advose welcome.
