Pretty much all game meat, the biggest sin is cooking like domestic animals bred to store fat, which means you’ve overcooked it. Pretty much all deer-type animals are interchangeable, including pronghorn antelope who aren’t closely related. Don’t cook the tender parts past medium rare or it will be sad. Don’t cook the tougher parts like front legs like steak (low and slow good) or they’ll be tough. But an old, tough animal will be less forgiving than a young one, and also diet does play a factor. But pretty much everything around here eats sagebrush and still tastes good.
Bird is more variable, waterfowl again should stick for the red to dark pink in the middle, others braise for a long time. Some are pretty difficult to deal with but I’ve learned never to trust anyone who says a certain meat is “never any good.”
Except to get taboo I’ve never heard much good about canine meat. I don’t really care to try, but feline has a better reputation and you would not expect that.
Do protected animals count? The Galapagos tortoise was nearly driven to extinction for many reasons and is now protected. One of those reasons was that their meat was so delicious that many thought it tasted better than any other food.
If QI is to be believed, live specimens were all eaten before they could be delivered to London and studied by scientists. Finally live turtles arrived in the early 1800s, and they could be studied, classified, and given scientific names.
Was freshly killed turtle meat more delicious than other fresh meat, or was it just now delicious than other foods that could be stored on a ship for a year?
This. For game, it’s all about the aging and the cooking.
Ducks and geese are finicky to age correctly. Small game should be hanged with the intestines. Since ducks and geese basically feed on grass, they can turn bad pretty quickly. Especially if the weather is warm. Grouse species (ptarmigan, hazel grouse, wood grouse, capercaille) are naturally preserved from their diet of benzoic acid-rich berries and can be hung almost indefinitely before turning bad. But no-one has mentioned woodcock; that’s perhaps the best meat in the world. Just make sure to take good care of the fat; that’s where the real flavor is.
Big game should be hung according to the animal’s age. Younger animals have a mild taste and are quite tender with short hanging, making the meat even milder. Older animals should be hung for a longer time, but that exacerbates the gamey flavor.
That said, non-hunters often conflate “game” flavor with the taste of poor slaughtering hygiene. If you slaughter a buck in heat, you have to be totally anal about hygiene, because the buck literally bathes in his own piss. Which is why I really prefer doe meat, since it’s almost impossible to pollute the meat with buck piss.
For European venison, the intensity of the game flavor is reindeer > red deer & roe deer > moose (elk in UK English). Personally, I prefer red deer, with roe deer as a very close second. Reindeer is #3, moose is #4 (basically very mild game flavor, almost like a very fat-free beef). With farmed animals, I love lamb and kid, am indifferent to beef and not very particular to pork or chicken.
I don’t care for any game meat in the US. I have tried them all, venison, moose, elk, bear. While in New Zealand I got to try venison twice, the first time was from a fresh kill that morning, the next time was farm raised served at a restaurant. Both were excellent and I would love to try it again. I also tried some fresh kill lamb while there, didn’t care for it. I also got to try horse meat once and found it to be delicious.
Small game can captured alive and fed a diet that will improve the flavor of their meat. For larger game it is said the season makes a difference because of types of the food available for them to eat like flower blossoms and seedlings, as opposed to old moldy acorns dead bark. And of course enough of it for the animals to fatten up.
I don’t think you need to “hang”, but the meat science is clear that a few days at a refrigerator-level temperature with good air circulation and dryness is important. You’re not hanging meat in your garage in southern Arizona, but it can hang out in a cooler protected from ice. What you don’t want to do it put it immediately in a freeze without letting rigor mortis relax.
You need to “hang” the meat. All meat needs to be aged to some extent to be reasonably tender. Some species more than others, older animals more than younger animals. Aging breaks down the muscle protein and the connective tissue, and there’s more of the latter in old animals than in young animals. It also develops the meat flavor. Source: I studied food science in college, am an avid hobby cook and have hunted both small and big game for about 35 years.
The youngest individuals of the most tender species only need to be aged until rigor mortis has passed, because any animal cooked while still in rigor will be dry and tough. But from there, there is quite a bit of variation. Game should be hanged for 40-70 “day-degrees”, IMNSHO a lot closer to (and even sometimes exceeding) 70. 40-70 day-degrees means that # of days multiplied with the average temp in C should be 40-70. But note that the flavor intensifies with prolonged aging, so if you want a mild taste you should look for young animals and age them only moderately.
Here on the right side of the pond, we reckon that the ideal aging temperature is some 10-14 degrees C, and if you get too close to or beyond 20 you’ve got a problem because you risk the meat spoiling before it’s properly edible. Also, if the temp is too low that the animal cools below 10-14 C core temp before rigor sets in, it will never be tender and the best you can cook is casseroles and sausage or burgers. If you get down to freezing temp the aging stops, and if the meat freezes the aging stops and can’t pick up if you thaw the meat.
I do understand, though, that getting reasonable aging temps in a garage in southern Arizona can be a bit challenging, so y’all probably have to compromise a bit.
Hanging pheasant is a plot point in James Clavell’s Shogun. The Japanese were repulsed by Blackthorn hanging the bird to develop the flavor. It ended with the death of the old man and Pilot getting a buttload of guilt to carry around.