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     Title: Gamey Meat: Here's The Deal 3
Categories: info, venison, duck, goose
  Servings: 4

           Venison 
           Ducks
           Goose  

Hormones in rutting bucks and bulls affect flavor, too. In addition,
a rutting animal will lose weight and fat, and will be fighting
constantly, stressing muscles and increasing the potential for old
wounds in the meat, caused by sparring.

Finally, how you kill the animal matters. A stressed animal's meat
will never be as good as one that was not stressed. This too is
because of hormones. The meat industry goes to great lengths to
design its killing facilities in such a way as to not stress the
animals — not so much for humane slaughter as for meat quality.

So the next time you "shot a little far back," and wondered why your
meat was gamey, that could be why. Needless to say shooting a
fleeing animals falls into this, too.

TAMING GAMEY MEATS

I'll be honest: There's not a lot to do about truly gnarly, gamey
meat. I mean, I once made about 50 pounds of Mexican chorizo from a
boar, but it still had a twang of nads on a hot day.

That said, you can remove the gamey taste of game in several ways.
First is to brine it in a solution of 1/4 cup kosher salt to 1 quart
water overnight; that's the ratio, since you will often need more
than a quart.

A second method is to soak meat in milk in the fridge overnight. I
will often do this to kidneys and livers of big game animals, which
can be off-puttingly smelly without this treatment.

A red wine soak is a good call, too if you are planning to cook
your meat in a stew or some such. One important tip: Boil the wine
first, then cool. If you don't do this, you will get a weird,
metallic flavor that I believe comes from the alcohol, which is
burned off by the boil. You can soak gamey meat in pre-boiled red
wine for several days in the fridge.

Finally, practicing good meat care is an obvious one, as is being
careful to not cut things like tarsal glands in deer or the scent
gland in a javelina. Also, ice is your friend. Cold meat equals good
meat.

  From: Hank Shaw                       
 
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