A friend has been a guest. The other day, my friend encountered a ground hog on the back roads. It charged out of the brush and directly into his car. He felt bad that happened as nobody enjoys when something dies. He jumped out to ensure it was not a pet. He called me and i assured him the buzzards or eagles or hawks will soon deal with it. I encouraged him not to mess with it because these situations often end badly. He asked what i meant. I said imagine you pick it up just as a game warden pulls up. He might think your enjoying ground hog stew tonight no matter what we know. Imagine you bag it to bring it back here for me to bury it or feed it to buzzards. What if it wakes up? The rule is if it is wild game leave it where it is. Someones garden is safer today. This is an unfortunate truth. A turkey, rabbit , or groundhog etc. panick and run into cars.
If you like road kill, I donāt think the odds are very high that a game warden would see you throw a dead animal in your truckā¦ some laws are stupid. However, I donāt think many people would stop to pick up a dead woodchuck, although I know some like its meat. Here, dead deer are common on the side of roads, often killed too quickly to emit the fear hormones that give venison a gamey taste. Great meat and a sin to waste, IMO, even if our vultures might disagree. They can have the woodchucks, coons and squirrelsā¦
So a deer that is blindsided by a car (sudden surprise death ā no fear) should taste best? I donāt think so. This hypothesis about āfear hormonesā is just a guess that has little if any supporting evidence and is almost certainly wrong.
The taste of venison is influenced by many factors ā diet before death, treatment of the carcass after death, etc. But in my own experience, the main cause of gamey flavor is blood left to coagulate within muscles. I come to this conclusion contrasting (1) deer killed instantly by a well placed gunshot; and (2) deer killed over 10 seconds, more or less, by a well-placed arrow.
In the case of a gunshot, the heart stops pumping immediately. Any blood flowing though arteries, veins and capillaries in the muscles stays there. Even if the deer is hung, most of the blood fails to move. And face it, blood smells bad and tastes bad.
In the case of a bowshot through both lungs, the heart keeps pumping and the muscles keep contracting as the deer runs 50-150 yards before dropping. A gallon or more of blood is squeezed from the muscles into the chest (and, to some extent, out the wound, mouth and nose). So a double-lunged bowshot deer will taste less bloody,
I suppose that a deer shot through the heart may retain much of its blood and therefore taste more like a deer shot with a gun.
I hunt in RI almost exclusively with bows. I have friends in VT who hunt almost exclusively with guns. They tell me that my venison tastes better ā much less gamey. They attribute it to the food that the local deer eat, but I suspect itās the weapon and the wound. Iām reminded that pre-industrial people would bleed domesticated animals (e.g., goats) before butchering them by cutting a major artery ā even though bleeding must be terribly stressful. It would be much less stressful to crush their skulls or spear their hearts.
In the Rustbeltā¦they would eat it!
Take em out any way you can. Same with coons.
Groundhogs do a nice job pruning your fig trees!
Theres good evidence i thought for the fear hormone/cortisol theory in fish at least
Yes but thereās even more evidence that blood taints the flavor of fish. And the mechanism by which fear affects flavor relates mainly to blood. Hormones such as cortisol constrict blood vessels and accelerate clotting, so dead fish that were under stress donāt bleed as efficiently.
The other factor in bow versus gun is harvest time. Bow season starts well before rut in oh and wv. So the meat will taste better. Never had bad meat from an early bow kill
Thanks for the clarification. I got that āinfoā from the most competent hunter Iāve ever met and never really questioned it because I donāt hunt for meat and only kill animals to defend my fruit. Iāve only dressed two deer my whole life.
When we threw a deer into my truck recently struck by a car, he said it died instantly given it collapsed right there about where it was hit. I believed him because the meat had the cleanest taste Iād every experienced, but it was long ago and my experience may have been affected by the placebo affect of his suggestion.
It is possible that the meat is okay but there is also a good chance that the internal organs rupture and the fluid gets circulated into the meat (gut shot).
Everything was intact.
Neighbor widow lady trapped a big groundhog that had been burrowing in her barn. I āterminatedā it for her.
Iāve cooked and eaten groundhog a time or two, but did not have time to dress this one out, so I deposited it in a spot in the pasture where I could watch later on the day.
Buzzards were on the scene inside an hour, and later in the day, a couple of bald eagles showed up to take over.
I have eaten freshly killed pork, beef, goat, chicken, mutton, deer, rabbit, squirrel, groundhog, pheasant and grouse and many types of fish and if they are prepared right were all good tasting except for the mutton and I am not sure it was prepared the best way as I only tried it one time. Everyone has different taste but I donāt mind the taste of venison and groundhog is good too but you have to take the glands off.