I shot a buck about a week and a half ago, shot it, gutted it and hung it up...was plenty cold enough, and brought it in the next morning. helped the man at the processors load it into a freezer then left.

meat gets picked up four days ago, i cook some steaks, they smell really funny, i don't eat them.

today i cook some ground meat, keep in mind i seasoned them pretty good, i start cooking it and I get a real foul smelling scent, i stick my head over the pan it smells like a pig farm (i had a buddy who owned one, this is the closest thing to the scent). smells so bad i gag.

the meat looks fine, isn't green or anything, but it stinks horribly. I've never had meat stink like this. I tried a bite and can smell the pig farm scent whenever I chew.

has anyone ever had this happen? the meat looks okay when its thawed, no funny colors or anything but man it is rank.

I got one ham cut into steaks, the rest hamburgered except for the tenders and backstrap....but now i'm afraid to cook any of it.

I don't know what to tell you...if it has a bad odor I'd take it back to the processor and get his .02 cents worth. Hopefully your processor is a first rate outfit and they haven't let the meat go bad, or mixed it with a bad batch of something else, or mixed w/ someones poorly handled venison, etc..etc. Another possibility could be what you deer was feeding on in the area. If feed is scarce and it were feeding on less desirable berries it may effect the meat???

How well do you trust your processor? I know its not exactly the same, but I took a bunch of hog quarters from about 5 good eating sized pigs to a place here in SA to have some pan sausage made up... when I got it back it was just as you described. Not bad chewing, but had a really funky smell that was hard to get past. The kicker is, I kept some of each hog (ribs,straps,a few quarters) to throw on the grill and they were all great.... no smell at all. Don't know what they did to that meat, or if it was all even mine, but that is the first and last time I used that place. I gave it to them 3 days off the hoof, buried in ice, and also helped them take it to their cooler.

hate to hear that. my guess is that it was not your deer you got back. that is why i process my own. it is time consuming but it is worth it. i have heard many horror stories from processors.

your probably right...we used to process our own, but the year didn't have the facilities.

this thing has ruined my entire day

Wonder if we both used the same processor being we're both from SA....

Sorry to hear that man. I'd take the meat back and some that you kept. Make them expalin as to why it smells and your doesn't.

How about the name of the processor so no one else gets screwed?

Been down that road before also............never again. I process my own (everything, but sausage).

Just a few thoughts as I was in the food business for a long time and dealt directly with the USDA and FDA.

Sounds like a bad processor - more than likely it was a sanitary issue at the place. There are many possible problems. Just a few possibilities> Pigs and deer should always be segregated before skinning. After skinning carcasses should be washed immediately. Holding walk in coolers should be ideally around 34-35 degrees. Processing equipment - knives, grinders, cutting boards, etc should be sanitized regularly - especially when switching from deer to pigs. All tools should be sanitized after 2 hours no matter what or bacteria can set in quickly. (especially grinders) The freezer should be at least set to 0 degrees. A combination of time, temperature and transport (equipment that can transfer bacteria) can easily result in foul/rank meat that will look perfectly fine. A quick glance at the place can tell you alot - what does it smell like in the processing area? Should be a clean smell, not just bleach. Are the cutting tables stainless steel? Are the cutting boards made of poly and not wood? is the floor concrete or tile with floor drains and doesn't have a grease stain? Are the butchers usings latex gloves? Do they clean their knives BEFORE using a diamond steel to sharpen? Are the transfer containers (used to move meat from one processing station to the next) washed after one complete circuit? Do you see pork and venison being processed at the same cut tables?

I would go back to the processor and ask to view his operation for 15 minutes, right then. If he refuses, you have your answer.

that is great info...the processing facility is fairly open, i saw the whole thing, and it looked okay to me, although to be honest i didn't give it more than a quick glance. in hindsight it could have been a a sanitary issue, but i don't know....definatly wasnt' the way the deer was handled after the kill.

they do a lot of smoked meat so the place smelled like smoked sausage, but that will hide alot.

texas proud, I was supposed to talk to the owner of the place today, i got know call back, i will post the name of the place if the situation isn't rectified in a satisfactory manner.

I'm no stranger to deer meat, i've used several processors (including this one) before and never had this problem.....i'm quite pissed to say the least.

I won't take a deer anymore to any of the processors here in town.

The last one I took was several years ago, and they lost half my meat, and then tried to give me someone elses, and I told them to keep it.

The closed down just a few short months afterward.

Only deer I'll take now is one I donate to Hunters for the Hungry over at Broadway Lockers since they are about the only one's that take deer near me for that organization. Don't know how they process, but I refuse to find out and I'll do my own! After all I've retired now, and have over 25 years experience in the meat business.

A couple of years ago I went into one of the "major deer processing plants" here in San Antonio. I was donating a bunch of exotics for a fund raising event, and this processor had been chosen to process the meat.

When I went in, there were piles of slabs of unlabeled meat stacked on a large stainless steel table, with about half a dozen guys carving it up.

The bottom line is that I later learned from the owner's friend, that when hunters bring in a deer, it's weighed, and there is a mathamatical formula that is used to determine how much venison they get back. The venison they get back is NOT necessarily from the deer that they brought in. Upon hearing this, I vowed to never take my deer to a processor, and I've done my own ever since.

The thought of getting someone's deer that was hung up in the sun, on a warm day, covered with flies, or gut shot, or not properly field dressed makes me want to puke. No thanks, I'll pass.

Be very careful of where you take your deer to be processed!

Unfortunately I also agree. Most processors do use the formula. And they don't segregate your deer from someone elses. They will never tell you this though. There are many charts available on the internet that will estimate processed pounds by live weight. Most of them are simply a measurement of the brisket, which then calculates poundage and the amount of meat that should be processed. Have you ever wondered about those processors who have a freezer up front with their "famous" sausage or burger mix? Wonder where they get the extra venison - was it my deer?

Feela's i couldn't agree more, my BIL is a market manager for a very large grocery chain here in Texas. He used to cut deer on the side, for several processors around town, He'll be the first to tell, dont take your deer to the processor, your not to get just your deer, they mix all that grind meat together, and you get your alotted amount.

As a former deer processor, I have a couple questions, was your deer gut shot or did you puncture the intestines while you were field dressing? If it was gut shot and the contents were spilled on the meat, it's almost impossible to get that smell/taste out. I've turned away many customers when this was the case. If the processor mixed your meat with someone else's meat that was gut shot, same result - bad on the processor. I never mixed anyone's meat - it was a pain but it's the only fair way to do it. Those formulas are based on no damage from the gun shot - after you process a few deer and the hunter tells you, "dang it took me 5 shots with my 7 mag to bring that bad boy down" you can quickly tell you aren't going to get a lot of meat from that deer - I wouldn't throw in the bruised and bloodied meat in the burger - I wouldn't eat it, so why would I expect someone else. It's not fair to the bowhunter who brings in pristine, unbruised meat to share his with some hunter who blasted the heck out of his deer.

The meat can spoil in the packages, if the processor stacks them all in a box before they are frozen, the packages in the middle will not freeze and they will spoil.

Sorry, for your bad luck. I do all my own and will teach anyone who wants how to do it. You can get a decent grinder at Cabela's or http://www.lemproducts.com/ and know you have your own meat done right.

I guess you have some dog food now.

ive personally had this happen twice at the same processor. the first time i thought it was just me but the second i knew for a fact that it wasnt me at all. when its really busy during deer season, these processors seem to weigh your deer and give you back close to the same weight that you turned in but i think more often than not you dont get your deer. i have one i trust thats actually pretty fr from my lease but i trust him. and ive been all around his plant. but it just seems like they get swamped and overwhelmed. i had some jerky that tasted like straight blood and wasnt even vacuum packed!! at 9 dollars a pound thats bull@#%t. so ive gone to usuing that one processor since i live in an apt and processing it here would be weird and im not at my lease long enough to keep it hanging up like it needs to. youre probably gonna have a hard time getting any retribution, or atleast i did.. but good luck

Double B,

Deer wasn't gut shot and i gutted him within 5 minutes of him dying.

I've tasted meat from a gut shot deer, and this is definatly not it

I'v done my own prossesing for years now ,I hang my deer at a local meat locker for three days it costs $12.00 then I take it home and take my time butchering the meat and its clean and cut the way I want it and wrapped the way I like .I also make my own sausage and snack sticks. Can't get any better

Said thing is that some hunters neglect the game and expect the best tasting back.........not the case here. Just a point I need to bring out.

I hunted w/ a friend that killed a buck in the AM. He stuffed a couple small frozen water bottles in the chest cavity and left it there for atleast 4hrs. The temperature was climbing and was around 64 deg f when we left (I went home and he went to the processors). He used a processor that I know for sure gives you your own meat back (I know him personally and have used him in the past when I didn't have time to process my own). I'm willing to bet this deer was partially spoiled if not most of it by the time it got to the processor (he also had a couple hour drive there and it was in the direct sunlight while in the back of the truck). I insisted that he cape and quarter it asap and put it on ice. Needless to say I won't eat any of his "meat".

A couple of months back, I may have been as quick as everyone else to convict your processor for not taking care of your meat, but we experienced the same thing at our lease this season. A buddy of mine shot a 3 point last month that smelled just as you described. We noticed the odor right away. I first thought that he had gut shot it, but I could see where the bullet passed through, and watched him gut it, and it was vitals only. We strung it up to skin it, and it smelled terrible, but the body cavity was clean. We started skinning around the hind quarters, and there was a layer of a green jelly like substance between the hide and meat that smelled terrible. We couldn't figure out what it was, but the deer looked healthy, so we just continued skinning. When finished, we took a water hose to it to try and remove all the jelly like stuff from the meat before we quartered it up. When we thought we had it cleaned up pretty well, we quartered it up, and stuck it in a cooler. The next morning, we could smell the meat in the cooler by just walking past it. It got worse the following morning, so we just dug a hole with the tractor and buried all the meat. We never did figure out what was wrong, and we did everything we could think of to remove the odor, but there was no hope for that meat. Neither of us had ever saw anything like that before. The meat looked fine, but smelled horrible.

they may not have cut the glands out of the meat.

That would be my guess too!