Axis meat taste bad

So I shot an axis, prob 2 1/2 year old small buck. The meat is so gamey I can’t eat it, I’ve shot several over the last 5 years that all have tasted good, all ages and sexes. I have used the same processor for 10 years which is Schotts in Helotes, I stand by them giving you what you shot. The only theory I have is I shot it at about 4pm on a warmer day and it wasn’t gutted till probably 7pm bc I finished the evening hunt before retrieving it. Any thoughts ?

If I had to guess I'd say you waited too long to field dress it. Personally I wouldn't let one lay for 3 hours unless it was a really cold day. I'm not judging you, just giving a personal opinion.

3hrs is a little long for getting it gutted. Getting those guts out let’s the meat cool faster. You need that meat under 70 degrees as quickly as possible. From there you have a few days. The only deer I ever killed that tasted bad was one that I didn’t find the same day. It was cold, but he didn’t die the quick painless death he deserved, and then those guts sat in him for a good while. Yeah he really wasn’t good. While 3hrs is far from ideal, I wouldn’t have guessed it would ruin it, but that sounds like that’s what happened. Axis are big. The bigger the animal, the harder it is to cool them quickly. 3hrs before gutting an axis might be like 5-6 for a white tail.

You need the meat under 41 degrees within a few hours. Bacteria forms at any temperature above 41 degrees.

I don't think 3 hrs would ruin it. How long before you skinned it and put it on ice?

I’m thinking I did let it sit too long I guess. I have shot dozens of deer in the past and let them sit a few hours while I continue to hunt till dark and they never tasted bad. But maybe it was colder on those days? It’s really disappointing I have a ton of fresh axis I can’t eat. In the future I guess I’ll just not finish my hunt if I shoot early and immediately tend to the animal.

Also did you sling it up on your hood and tie it down then drive home?

Pitchfork, it was gutted about 3 hours after I shot and put in a walk in cooler at a processor.

Snake, I drive it from Rocksprings to SA 2 days later gutted, it was stiff cold and I put ice in the cavity. I’ve been doing the same thing going on 6 years now, never had a bad tasting animal.

IDK maybe it was sick or something......

Two things contributed to the tainted meat.
The three hours before gutting and leaving the hide on it for a couple of days.

The best tasting meat is always the meat that is handled properly.
If it wasn't, everyone would be doing it.

Pope, we typically gut then take them to a walk in cooler, typically they chill in there for a few days before we head back home and drop them off at a processor, never once has one ever tasted this way so I’m guessing maybe I let it sit too long but I’ve also done that before and never had bad meat. The shot was also a little more behind the shoulder then I would have liked, maybe it hit some guts then leaving it sit for 3 hours I’m not cold weather ?

Negatory. Cold aging a deer with the hide on is preferred. IF, it is shot, gutted and in a walk-in within an hour. This hunter let an animal lay way too long in warm weather and got meat spoilage.

How hot was it? Should be good unless it was 100 in full sun.

I'm thinking this. I've let plenty lay for three hours.

Wonder if the walk-in wasn't up to temp for some reason, and maybe it kicked on later?

Agreed. If it's cold enough I will always let it hang with the skin on. I always process my own meat, have let them hang with skin on for up to 5 or 6 days, and have never had bad meat.

Have you tried from different packages of the processed meat. Maybe got a couple of packages mixed from someone else.

Yep. I like to immediately eviscerate, skin, and cool.

It could just be a result of something the animal had been eating. Or maybe it had been stressed for a couple days and the adrenaline gamed up the taste.

A warm day sitting 3 hours is a problem to me. It doesn't take much to taint meat.

How long did it take you to get it to the processer? 3 hours before you gutted it, it could have been 6 or so hours before you got it in a cooler. Also if it sat in a cooler for a period of time before they did anything with it that is a problem too. If it was already experiencing spoilage or bacteria processing/freezing immediately may have been ok but a cooler would allow spoilage to continue. Uncontaminated stuff can age, but stuff that already has a bacterial problem will spoil in a cooler.

It wasn’t that hot, it was in December, maybe 65-70 degrees then cooler as the sun set.

It don't matter, 3 hours is too long.

TFF Caribou

Beef is quick aged at 65 degrees for three days. It takes a LONG time for the meat on an animal the size of a cow to be cooled down to that temperature. When you double surface area, you quadruple volume. You actually want microbial action to occur. That’s what aging is. It makes the flavor more mellow and more complex, as well as tenderizes the meat. The only pathogenic microbes in the meat of a healthy animal are on the outside. That’s why you should sear a steak, and then eat it as rare as you want, but you must completely cook ground meat. How cold do you think public land hunters in areas with no vehicle access get their meat? Back pack hunters go days without getting their kill on ice all the time, and it doesn’t harm their meat at all. Most of the spoilage bacteria have very limited action below 70 degrees. It will take a 110degree animal a long time to cool below that temperature, so getting the guts out and increasing airflow is key. Very large animals(elk, moose, bison) can suffer a malady called bone sour, where the most internal portions of the meat(against the bone) on the thickest parts of the animal will spoil because they cannot be cooled quickly enough. The solution is to cut to the bone and prop the meat open with a stick to allow more airflow while you bone the rest of the meat out. It takes some very cold weather to get the hind quarters of an elk below 70 degrees in a day if you leave the quarters whole. Easy refrigeration has confused a lot of people about food safety. For many thousands of years before refrigeration meat went several days without spoiling, and it will continue to do so. The cooler you get it, the longer it will last. Most meat is aged below 40 degrees for many reasons. 1) few if any pathogenic bacteria grow below 41 degrees, however, they’re still there, only in the outside, and properly cooked, depending whole muscle vs ground, will still be safe whether stored abover or below 41 degrees. 2) Meat aged at 34 degrees will take 14-28 days to reach the same point of aging as meat aged at 40 degrees for 7-14 days, which gives the processor more time to finish processing a batch of carcasses that will all age for an identical time period before being placed on the shelf. However, high volume operations the same aging can occur in only 2-3 days at 60-65 degrees without risk of spoilage bacteria getting out of hand and will have the same shelf life upon reaching the shelf as meat that had aged for 14-28 days at 34 degrees before hitting the shelf. Quick aging reduces freezer space and inventory which can be very important for important for massive suppliers handling thousands of animals per day. You can quick age and store 3000 animals or you can age at 34 degrees and store 28,000 animals! That doesn’t even figure he price per square foot of maintaining 34 degrees vs 60-65 degrees. 3) just as with elk, moose and bison, it can be difficult to get the round of a beef animal below 70 degrees on a suitable time frame without some degree of processing unless your cooler is colder. To quick age at 60-65 degrees they must get those animals processed very quickly, not because 60 degree air isn’t cool enough, but because it takes a lot longer to bring the internal meat temperature below 70 degrees with 60 degree air than with 34 degree air.

My meat started tasting MUCH less “gamey” and became MUCH more tender when I started giving my deer a little time before getting them in the freezer. I gut and quarter as quickly as possible, then if it’s 60 degrees or cooler outside, I get in no particular hurry to ice( keeping the meat dry allows less penetration of bacteria on the outside). I keep ice in the cooler( assuring air temps below 40) but not tons of it for the next week before I begin processing. Then I start with back straps and finish with the chuck giving the chuck the longest aging time, usually a full two weeks. I would go longer if I had a larger space and could dry age. Wet aging ( sealed container like a ziplock, or even just meat sitting on meat preventing some surfaces from drying) should stick closer to the low end of the aging times, while dray aging can actually go well beyond.

There are restaurants that age for over a year, then cut all the nasty looking black meat off.

Leaving the skin on is usually not a problem. It does provide some insulation which slows cooling, but it’s usually not a huge problem and actually helps keep the meat clean which is just as important.

Leaving the guts in probably just didn’t let the meat get under 70 quickly enough.

You said you kept hunting. Was someone else’s deer stacked on top of it in the truck on ride home? I once went on a duck hunt with a guy that bagged them all to keep his truck from getting messy. 20-30 ducks stacked on each other, sealed in a trash bag and left in the sun in the black bed of a pickup for 8hrs made for some pretty nasty ducks. He said he never liked he way duck tasted....well duh!

There is still the possibility of it being something else. 3hrs, while not generally recommended by anyone, still seems a little on the line. Bow hunters back out for the night and retrieve in the morning all the time. Granted it’s at night with no sun to heat the meat, and the temperatures are probably a lot lower. The only deer I ever had a problem with wasn’t collected that day and it was above freezing all night, but his guts were in for a lot longer than 3hrs, and he didn’t die quickly...probably not the day he was shot. .

I gut the animal when it hits the ground........

I think you leaving the hide on was the problem. The three hours I don't think would of been a problem if you would of skinned it and then put on ice or hang in the cooler.

You would be very surprised how much the meat will retain temperature under the skin/fur if your above freezing like most coolers are.

Something else wrong. I like many have shot deer in late evening and had to retrieve the next day. In field with guts and skin over 13 hours at temps in 60's. Never gamy.
Further skin on in cool temps never an issue. Up north we hung our deer out side in
30's 40's for a week or more

Only had gamy animal once it was a buck shot in up state New York given to me by my uncle. Smelt terrible and tasted worse. Gamiest critter ever and don't know why!!

How many of those people take their meat to a processor? How many got their pos nasty deer back? Or got it back mixed in with a bunch of other meat?

It would have to be arctic tundra before I eat or feed anything to my family that sat with guts in it dead over night. I have had a few hogs etc. that were not found till the next morning and they smelled rotten already not going to happen in my camp.

Could you please elaborate on the quick age process. In all my life I have never heard it claimed beef was aged for 72 hours at 65 degrees, and I don't currently believe it.

Also there is a difference in meat that wont kill you or make you sick and is edible and meat that tastes good. In history I think it had to do more with not making you sick and being safe for consumption than tasting good.

The inside temperature of an animal is higher than 60-70 degrees so the animal already has a head start on spoillage and leaving it for 3 hrs or longer? Those gasses are just bubbling and girgling in there.

3 hours is not too long. Something else caused it. I am eating one right now that was gutted 3.5 hours later and put in walking with skin on. In S. Tex killing 8 deer in a morning is not unheard of and they are not gutted until hunt is over and we are back at the cooler. Hundreds of deer have tasted fine.

I hunt with one guy who guts anything a second after it is shot. At my lease I will have it gutted within an hour but I like to hang ir.

that little tidbit could also have an impact, especially in warmer conditions. did you rinse it out well before putting in walk in cooler?

I wonder how long his summer time car ride was to the processor?

Quick aging is 2-3 days at 60-65 degrees. It lets the enzymes, bacteria and fungi responsible for the aging process to work a lot faster than they do between 34 and 40 degrees. There can be more “off” flavors because there will be strains of bacteria having slow activity at 60-65 degrees that have no activity at 34-40 degrees, but it will not be considered spoiled. Most bacteria associated with spoilage do not thrive below 70 degrees. You might prefer one aging process over another in a taste test, but you would not associate it with being spoiled. Most people prefer wet aged meat to dry aged because that’s how most meat is sold. To dry age you have to hang the whole side and process very close to the time of sale, but to wet age, you can process and let the meat continue to age in the package. The finest meat is going to be meat that was cooled at a specific rate and then dry aged for a long time a low temp. This is very expensive because you must maintain a large enough area to store an animal for that extended period(again, if you process 100 per day, then a 3 day age requires you to cool an area that will fit 300 animals, but a 28 day age requires you to cool a space that will hold 2800 animals!) , then dry aging evaporates out a lot of the weight that would have shown on the scale, after that a lot of the dried meat is trimmed away. The bargain basement meat markets often get their prices down in part by aging quickly at warmer temperatures. Keep in mind that they can really do any temperature in between, and the higher the temp, the shorter the storage time. Might you win more awards by aging your meat at 34 degrees than at 60? Yes. But the idea that not getting the animal on ice within an hour would make it taste so bad that you have trouble eating it is absurd.

Are you sure you got Axis meat back?

I did a google search on this 3 day quick aging... it says the meat is kept under ultraviolet lamps to prevent microbial growth... yes so comparing that to his rotting deer in a field is bs.

I don't mount any deer. If I shoot one I cut the throat,gut, skin, wash out and put in the cooler usually all within 30 minutes. Of course I live where I shoot them and not everyone can do this. But I would think you would need to at least get the guts out as soon a possible. There is nothing worse than gutting a puffed up deer that has been laying out in the sun for a few hours.

op said warmer, what was the temp, most likely waited to long to get the guts out.

UV light will not penetrate deeply into the meat. It only keeps surface microbes from getting out of hand. The inside has the same microbial activity regardless of the lights. His unksinned, I gutted animal also has no “surface” microbes going crazy, because the surface of his meat has not been exposed or contaminated. I wouldn’t leave the guts in for three hours by choice, but there is likely more to the story than that alone regarding his meat.

That bullet perforated the animal and your undisturbed surface theory.

Yeah it was rinsed out good. Maybe they gave me someone’s old south Texas buck ?

I've had early bow season kills that were not dressed for 3 hours and they tasted fine but I process my own. It definitely was not the ideal plan but sometimes it happens when you are a little unsure of the bow shot so you give it time. It could be any number of things but I would bet it happened somewhere between the drive to the processor and the drive home from picking it up at the processor. Just a guess though.

I don't think you got your animal back......

I had a frozen 3 pound cryovac package of cured bacon that I forgot in my truck over night in the winter temps probably in the 50-60 range. The next morning I found it cooked some and it didn't smell and tasted normal so I put the rest in the freezer. I thawed it back out and cooked some more a few days later and it smelled and had an off taste.

Once you stretch the limits too far keeping in a cooler etc. does not prevent spoilage.

Sounds like you got Taint Meat back..."tain't your deer".

I always try to have them gotted ASAP. I remember people in Wyoming telling me that antelope always tasted gamely....but I had mine gutted within 30 minutes and a bag of ice inside them. They tasted fine. Gut them within a half hour and take photos later.

Me too and I like the taste of antelope better than deer......

My BIL’s buck was shot, gutted after 90 minutes in cool weather, and at the processor in under two hours. My dad called me today saying he used some ground meat off the deer and thought it might be rank. I gutted the deer personally and it was not mishandled. That would be our second in 40 years.

It happens.

Your chewin on somebodys south texas whitetail deer that marinated in the back of their ranger for 6 hours on the same warm day while they threw back frostys and argued who was gonna clean it, they got back your 3 hour un gutted Axis and are damn happy!

3 hours is def. A little morr than ideal but a 3 hour gutted axis should still be better than an immediately gutted whutetail unless you got the meat contaminated with stomach juice.

The antelope my buddy shot up near Raton was amazingly good.

We gut our south Texas white tails in a timely manner and I prefer it to axis.

Processor kept the good axis meat for himself and gave you a deer someone never picked up?

3 hrs is a little long but I can't imagine it completely ruined the meat.




The only antelope I ever shot was awful, but we did let it hang too long before processing so that's our fault.

That was a big Axix

I think you're just a lousy cook...

Now Rusty, you know that is not PC.

Once the meat has been turned over to someone else all bets are off.
I'm sure the processor fired a lot of people over the years who couldn't have cared less about reputation....Just sayin!

I don’t worry about pc. With me you get what you pay for and I don’t get paid enuff.

You've been paid plenty with good looks and sharp intellect

I have never had issues with Axis meat! It tastes better than most WT or even Elk. Not sure what happened to that one for you?