It’s a Good Day When.......

[Tom Flanigan]

Dean, I’ll give you my perspective on young animals vs. old on the table. The meat of very young animals is tough for some reason. Take veal as an example. It is sliced into cutlets because it is too tough to eat thick. And even the cutlets are tough. It’s the same with all animals, I believe. It is my opinion that a year and a half old buck is no more tender than a five and a half year old deer. If both are aged properly, it makes no difference. Aging properly at a constant temperature is the key. Aging breaks down the muscle and makes meat more tender. Some deer take more aging time than others, without regard to age. I can tell by the smell of the meat when it’s ready to be cut and packaged. I let my venison and other large game age for about a week and then I smell it every day to determine when I should process it. I once left a hindquarter age for two months just to experiment. It was the most tender venison I ever had. The only problem is that the hindquarter had almost two inches of crust that had to be removed. Hence, there was a lot of waste so I never did it again. Hindquarter should not be covered with anything to age properly. A week and a half aged hindquarter will have some crust but it is minimal.

It is important also to skin the animal as quickly as possible to permit rapid cooling. I never take a deer whole out of the woods anymore. I treat it like I treat a moose. I skin it by cutting a slit on top of the backbone and then skin down the sides, remove the backstraps and then skin out the hindquarters and take them out in two pieces by breaking the hindquarter joints. It takes me about 20 minutes to process a deer in the woods. I had a friend time me once. He said I looked like the guy on the Ginsu knife commercial.

Bears take more time to process in the woods since you have to skin to the feet and then break the bone so the feet stay with the skin. But aging of all game and quick cooling are the keys, in my opinion. I’ve never had a bear, moose or deer that was tough, regardless of the age.