I like grass fed beef, but it definitely has a stronger flavor to it. I wouldn't pay for grass fed steaks, they are better with plenty of fat in them. I'm not sure you could actually get a grass fed animal to grade prime. But for ground beef, anything that goes in the crockpot, or grilling roasts to slice thin, I enjoy the stronger flavor.

Just need the right grasses. Snake River Farms (SRF) American Wagyu is grass fed, here in the Northwest, and then finished with grass blended feed. I like it!!

I order Snake River Farms occasionally so I had to fact check this one. They use grain. See from there website below.

Snake River Farms American Wagyu Beef cattle are grass and hay fed on pasture for the first year of their life. They are then fed a sustainable diet of hay, forages, grains (including corn, soft white wheat and barley), as well as potatoes, vitamins and minerals. SRF cattle will never receive any growth promotants or growth promoting hormones, but can receive antibiotics to treat illness and infection.

corn finished = fat, fat = flavor

Well put.

We started doing grass fed and finished a couple years ago. The first one we sent in was awful, like you described. Tasted real gamey. After doing some research, we did it all wrong with him. Sent the steer in around 16-18 months of age. And it was January.

He was way too young and he was on winter grass and hay. Not a good finishing material.

Now our target is 26-29 months of age. It takes longer to build up that fat on grass. We also shoot for a July-September processing date to give them several months of that good spring and summer forage.

The last two we did for ourselves came out great. I have sold one on here that i hope came out just as good.

I dont understand how folks who cannot stomach grass fed beef even begin to try and eat elk, deer, axis, etc.

That feeding program is similar to the steers we fed out for 4-H. They were fine.

No one is going to mistake grilled backstrap for grass fed ribeye. Hell, I prefer venison to a prime ribeye.

They’re completely different animals. What the animals eat affect there flavor. Deer can’t even digest grass. It’s less than 5% off their diet. Cows aren’t eating fruit/vegetable crops, acorns, berries, etc. and deer are.

It’s like comparing apples to oranges. Their both fruit but that’s about where the similarities ends. Grass fed beef tastes like grass to me. I will eat it. But I don’t care for it.

Grain fed for me. I like marbling in my meats.

X2. I like fat!

Maybe Im wrong, but that is about the dumbest thing i ever heard. Axis eat grass and are praised as better than white tails no?

Elk eat grass.

I’ve raised beef all my life and it doesn’t have to be black angus to be good if it’s fed out properly with grain properly.
The black angus thing is marketing.
I’ve fed out black angus for myself that just wasn’t that good and fed out a Hereford that was excellent.

It is the same old different strokes for different folks for me. There are too many cuts that I no longer buy as well as the total amount of beef. I probably eat more than a pound of beef each week.

i am no fan of grass fed/finished. corn for me, without the drugs if possible.

Love a good ribeye or filet, beef is what it eats. Grain finished for 2 months seems to be the best. That said I will take Axis or Fallow any day

Never had Axis or Elk for that matter. But I’ve lived off white tails for a long time. Grew up on beef from our ranch. My point is correct when comparing to whitetailed deer. My point was grass fed beef doesn’t taste like venison. So while I’ve often heard Elk and Axis is superior to whitetail I’ve never heard a single soul say the taste like beef. So when you say how can someone try venison if they can’t stomach grass fed beef even though their not the same. Well that’s the stupid thing I’ve ever heard.

I think elk tastes like sweet beef.

I stand corrected.

I think deer are fine to eat even really good when people who know what they are doing prepare them. I just find it comical when people claim an animal that has been bread born and raised in captivity for the purposes of superior food for hundreds of years is garbage and some wild animal nibbling on twigs and berries is superior table fare.

Mr beer i do not doubt you can cook up a mean deer. Apply the same amount of effort and technique to grass fed beef and venison and I dont see how you could call one great and the other subpar though.

I grew up eating grass fed beef only and actually liked the taste of it. Never had feedlot finished steak until in late teens to early 20's. It was nothing special till I ate the first aged and finished rib-eye in my mid 20's. There was huge taste and tenderness difference then. I had a close friend who ranched cattle all of his life and raised/finished his own butcher calves. He always had one in the pen on feed and finished on his own feeding method. He told me he finished with corn for a reason. Back in the 80's corn jumped in price so he finished one calf on milo that year. To prove his point he grilled some steaks one evening...corn finished and milo finished. It was easy to tell the difference. They are what they eat IMO. Same for venison....many trim off the fat due to how it tastes. I never have since I feed a lot of corn and it shows in the taste of venison. When I process my own deer, I always use the fat trimmings and grind it into the ground burger. Never had any of the "gamey or rancid" tasting frozen venison that many talk about. I have always wanted to kill a midwest whitetail to compare the venison to a Texas whitetail.
I have had elk, axis, blackbuck, red deer and fallow deer. To me none of them were as good as whitetail off my friends place or my own land that I cleaned and processed myself. If I had to rate the "exotics" in order....for me it would be: Axis, then blackbuck, red deer, fallow and lastly elk. Axis just had the better taste and finished product. Hard to ruin a good axis cut IMO....the rest of the exotics it is easier.

I killed a big doe with a muzzleloader in Nebraska one year. She sure was some fine eating, noticeably different than S Texas deer. Those deer pretty much do nothing but feed in corn and soybean fields. Big deer & lots of fat.

Just like the pigs that I used to kill here in the corn crop country, vs brush country pigs. BIG difference in taste.

I would have thought with all the corn, beans and alfalfa they would be excellent eating. I have heard it is excellent. I had pronghorn for the first time 1.5 yrs ago now and it was excellent...everyone I had talk to over the years told me it was very poor eating. We cleaned it immediately in field and got it on ice to cool it down. Then in town layered the meat with ice. One ranch I managed had turkey feeders that I kept filled with milo. Had one doe that lived at one of the feeders for a couple of years. We shot does that fall and one hunter ended up shooting her. Every other deer on the ranch had the same colored fat when we cleaned them and it was from all the corn/protein. That does fat was more of a dark honey or shade of yellow color than the white looking fat on everyone of the other deer that we shot on the ranch over the years. She had to be the doe eating from that milo feeder since the guy shot her very close to it. Not sure how she tasted but it was the only deer I have seen with fat that color. I know on mule deer they taste like what they are eating. The two best mule deer I have killed and had processed were my last two on the lease in Pecos County I was on. One was 7 yrs old at least and was probably the best eating deer I have had from out there. He was not within miles of a feeder and lived in the middle of our lease....70,000 acres and we did not feed. When I grilled steaks form that mule deer the fat tasted like they were from a whitetail eating corn would have tasted.

I'm gonna get me a pronghorn one of these years. I've never eaten pronghorn, but like you I've heard both good and bad about the meat.

Same goes with Mule Deer. I've never hunted them or eaten them, but most of the time I've always heard they taste like what they eat (sage) and not very good. My ex FIL pretty much ruined his whole family bringing home Mule Deer bucks from the sand hills out in Western Nebraska. I tried to get my ex wife to try my deer meat 100 times and she wouldn't touch it.