Every now and then I shoot a roe deer that ends up tasting strangely bitter - not overpowering, just there in the background, though it lingers in the mouth. The best I can describe it is a bit like the smell of pencil shavings.
The only thing these carcasses have in common is that they were all shot on Heather.
I’m now starting to wonder if eating heather affects the meat.
Has anyone found similar?
Well known amongst livestock farmers that an animals diet makes a difference to flavour of the meat. I worked on a dairy farm for a while and the taste of the milk changed very quickly when the cows put out to pasture after a winter diet of maize and grass silage.
I also shot a couple of Roe that were raiding a field of leeks. One was in poor condition so condemned, but the other definitely tainted with a leek / onion flavour.
I have also noticed difference in flavour between roe raised on farmland / deciduous woodland and those from moorland commercial forestry.
As for bleeding - if the bullet has gone through the heart / aorta etc the animal’s meat will be as bled out as it’s ever going to be. But it will all be in the body cavity. All the so called bleeding will do is let that blood out before you gralloch.
Very different to a slaughter house where a beast is stunned, or captured bolt through the brain and the throat slit and the heart will continue pumping out all the blood for several moments.
With deer, by the time you get to the carcass, especially if you wait a few moments before approaching all the bleeding that is possible will have occured. Sticking a knife in will make little difference. If the deer has run versus dropping on the spot and kicking any blood in the muscle mass will have flowed out of the massive damage to major blood vessels.
The other source of venison bitterness can be the fat. Venison fat, certainly to me is kind of bitter and rancid. It is certainly not sweet like beef or lamb fat. I tend to remove all of the fat certainly prior to cooking, but generally when butchering the carcass.
