I agree. Way overated IMO. Also, I grind most of it and make sausage, burger, etc... straps and roasts (occasional steaks from the sirloin) are the only actual pure venison cuts Ill take out of a deer. And I've never been able to tell the difference if it was aged or not.
From my experience, I doubt I can tell if meat was aged 3 days or 7 days. But I do know I'll never do a same day, or even next day butcher job. Meat processed in that short of time I feel is very chewy & not that good. Under my current butchering system it takes me 2-4 evenings to completely do a deer, depending on how much time I devote at a clip. So my meat ages anywhere from 2-7 days before finally making it into the freezer.
Ditto. If its cold enough, I let them hang a couple days. If not, I get them quartered up and in a cooler with lots of ice. I usually leave them in there a couple/few days. The ice water draws out alot of the blood from the meat, making it taste better all around. We've butchered hundreds of deer this way....never once had a problem. Got one in the cooler on the front porch now that I killed Saturday
After seeing all the comments I guess I dont have to say Dont Eat It. But I will.......DONT EAT IT. I kill my deer and then hang in garage and butcher right away. When I prepare my meat to be cooked I let sit in marinade or seasoning for a day or two then cook up. The longest I have ever let one hang is 1 day and that is it. It has to be very cold out for me to let hang in my garage other wise it is cut up ASAP.
I agree with most here and say don't eat it.......When I lived in ND we would skin the deer and then let them hang for about 3 days....When I moved to AL we would go hog hunting and when we got them we would quarter it the same day and then throw it in a cooler with ICE and change the water and add ICE every day for about a week....
Kill it today. Butcher it tomorrow if it's cool out. "less than 45°" Kill it today. Butcher it today, if it's above 45° That's what I have always done. Aging the meat just kinda scares me.
After reading bout the 180 yards shot with a slug gun it is no surprise to me that he let it hang that long. There should be a test people have to take before they can hunt.
No sir, I would not miss............I just would not recover you until you started to rot and stink))) Get it right Tony. Dave
We have a rule of thumb when it comes to hanging carcasses. But it works with Celsius and not Fahrenheit, so bare with me when I try to explain it. In Norway we let everything hang for a total of 40*Celsius in added up average over the days the meat is hanging. Ok, I will try to explain a little bit better, if the temperature where the meat is hanging are 4* Celsius, the meat should hang for 10 days, if it is 8* Celsius it can hang for 5 days. If the conditions are ideal the meat can hang upwards to 50* C in total, but then the temperature should be between 4-6* C the whole time. So in this case the temperature was in the 50*,60* and upwards to 70* F, lets say that the average is about 60*F which equals (almost) 13* C that gives the meat 3 days to hang at the most.
Your formula ain't working here ..... that is way to warm to hang it at all IMO .... y'all eat what you.want ....
I hang deer. I'll hang them in the 40's and 50's for a short time. Longer if it's colder. Once left a deer for about 10 days, but it froze solid the first day. (had to cut it while it was still partially frozen) If it's going to be in the 60's or 70's the deer is getting cut up and aged in a cooler. I would say that the deer in the first post is probably still edible.... but it's beyond aging and now spoiling... But there's difference between spoiled and 'dangerous to eat'. If it's cooked thoroughly it's probably just 'tangy'. (insert barfing smiley here) When I used to process gamebirds for a side job we had guys bring in pheasants that they had shot earlier.... like two weeks earlier... ungutted.... and then wanted them plucked. They were refrigerated but being shot, the guts would be like brownish-black paste and smelled to match the looks. They were darn near impossible to pluck because the skin wanted to come off in pieces. But those guys swore that pheasants tasted best when 'aged' like that. Bleagh.
