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Deer are regularly hunted across the United States, but some people pay exorbitant prices for imported deer meat:
Wintertime is a special time of year at Cafe Berlin, located just a few blocks from the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. This is when they roll out their menu of wild game, such as deer, wild boar, and quail. Regular customers have come to expect it. "They ask, weeks in advance, 'When does the wild game menu start? When does it start?'" says James Watson, one of the restaurant's chefs. And the star of that menu is venison. The restaurant serves venison ribs, venison loin, even venison tartar. It's food that takes your mind back to old European castles, where you can imagine eating like aristocracy.
You won't see venison in ordinary supermarkets. At Wagshall's, a specialty food shop in Washington, I found venison loin selling for $40 a pound. This venison comes from farms, usually from a species of very large deer called red deer. Much of it is imported from New Zealand.
Yet there's a very different side to this luxury meat. Less than two hours drive from Washington, Daniel Crigler has a whole freezer full of venison that he got for free. Crigler's home in central Virginia is surrounded by woodlands full of white-tail deer. For Crigler, they are venison on the hoof. And he loves hunting. "I love the outdoors. I love being out. But I also like to eat the meat," he says, chuckling. It's pretty much the only red meat he eats. And as he shows off the frozen cuts of venison in his freezer, this crusty man reveals his inner epicurean. "That's a whole loin, right there," he says. "What I like to do with that is split it open, fill it full of blue cheese, wrap it up in tin foil and put it on the grill for about an hour and a half."
And here's the odd thing about this meat, so scarce and expensive in big cities; so abundant if you're a hunter in Madison County, Virginia. Hunters like Crigler kill millions of deer every year in America, but the meat from those animals can't be sold: It hasn't been officially approved by meat inspectors. Also, the government doesn't want hunters to make money from poaching. Yet hunters are allowed to give it away, and many do. As a result, venison occupies a paradoxical place in the world of food. It's a luxury food that turns up in notably non-luxurious places.
Related: Arby's is Selling Venison Sandwiches in Six Deer-Hunting States
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday January 04 2018, @03:56AM (8 children)
You have to specify what beef, actually. I can have one cow slaughtered and processed by an expert butcher - and you'll say it's horrible. Another cow, of a different breed, processed by a rank amateur butcher, you'll swear it's the best meat you've ever eaten. An old mossy longhorn compared to a Brangus? There really is no comparison.
For me, the average venison ranks with medium good quality beef. Which, of course, still doesn't compare well with some good Brangus. If the deer meat has been processed by some dumb redneck, who has no idea how to handle it and cut it, then yeah, it's poor quality, and you don't enjoy it much.
Of course, the cook makes all the difference in the world. An excellent chef/cook can take poor quality meat, and make it good. And a crappy cook can ruin the best of meat.
In short, you can't generalize like that. Venison is good meat, it all depends on how you treat it. Kinda like women, I think - treat it poorly, it will treat you poorly in return.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @05:39AM
Just goes to show, Runaway, you should never eat what you fucked. Just saying.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Kromagv0 on Thursday January 04 2018, @02:33PM (3 children)
You also forget that how the deer is killed also affects the quality of the meat. I have had some really bad venison over the years, mostly from my cousin who is a bad shot. He frequently does gut shots and his deer run for hours. As he hunts in the same area I do and brings his deer to the same processor, and I have cooked some of his deer meat and mine the only difference is in the kill and his are frequently bad ones. All that adrenaline and running when you are trying to find the thing only makes things worse. Then there are the people who let the deer lay in the bed of a truck or hang in an over warm garage for too long and it starts going south as well.
Yes the cook's and the butcher's ability affect the taste but there are also other factors that have a big impact too like kill quality, how it was handled before it got processed, and what the deer was eating.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday January 04 2018, @02:44PM (2 children)
That earned you a heaping serving of +1 informative.
And, suggest to that cousin that if he shoots a dear, and it runs off, he should just sit down, and chill for at least fifteen minutes before pursuing. That won't make the kill any cleaner, but if the deer isn't being actively pursued, it should either lie down, or go to water. Once he lies down, or gets in the water, he ain't getting back up. That beats walking 20 miles through snow, underbrush, and bog, tracking blood spots.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Kromagv0 on Thursday January 04 2018, @03:50PM (1 child)
That is what I keep telling him and that he should also spend a bunch more time at the range. I hate helping him retrieve his stupid deer as they do run all over god's green earth. Even though my deer run it isn't far (40 yards max and that was with the biggest deer I ever shot) and then they tip over dead. I can see where they are and the blood trail to them that looks like someone dumped a bucket of red paint on the ground. I always go for the clean unobstructed shot to the vitals and get them through both lungs, or the heart and a lung depending on how they are facing.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday January 04 2018, @08:17PM
Have him read this, especially the part about the autonomic plexus: https://www.ballisticstudies.com/Knowledgebase/Effective+Game+Killing.html [ballisticstudies.com]
He should practice or do what he needs to get accurate because one shot in the autonomic plexus is instant -- just bang flop.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday January 04 2018, @02:46PM (2 children)
Those are good points. I'd add that with venison in my experience the bigger factor is what the deer ate. Whitetail from the mountains who've been eating pine bark and the like taste much gamier than their cousins from east of the Divide who've been eating the same stuff the free-range cattle have been eating.
I have never had venison cooked in a smoker, though. I can see that changing the experience. Has anyone here?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday January 04 2018, @10:23PM
I've had various smoked venison products over the years. They've varied in quality, just as smoked beef or pork or whatever products do. Then again, I'm generally a fan of venison, and extra flavor (sometimes called "gaminess") is a matter of fashion in cuisine. A few generations ago, meat was often not just aged but often underwent "mortification" where it would basically rot for a while, then be trimmed of mold, etc. The intensification of flavor including gamey flavors was often prized.
Today, in the era of boneless skinless chicken breasts as the standard "mild" (aka "flavorless") meat, it's unsurprising that wild game is often avoided by many. (To be clear, I'm not passing any judgment here: people like what they like, and there are things that are too gamey for me too.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @01:17AM
Smoked backstrap done right has to be one of the most outstanding things I've ever eaten. To echo what others have said, whoever butchers the deer needs to know what they're doing (Read a guide!) Excess silver-skin can easily ruin the flavor in my opinion. I've eaten venison primarily for the last decade due to my Father being an avid hunter in an area with less restrictions for hunting. If you do it right, its not "gamey" Yes, its lean, yes its delicious, and Bambi's smoked backstrap melts in your mouth.