>So I finally got to cook
>up some of the meat.
> Had some backstraps the
>other night and they were
>great. Apparently everyone was
>right and if they run
>at ALL, or get juiced,
>the tenderloins are worthless.
>Lesson learned.
I am going to disagree with running makes the meat bad. As a family and brothers with lots of kids, we like to hunt antelope and harvest around 10 every year. A lot of them are harvested by youth hunters and shot placement gets better with experience, but everyone has their first. Some times an antelope gets wounded and it takes a few miles and longer than we like.
We always debone and remove the meat as soon as the animal is down. Then on ice.
We have tried to figure out why we get a bad tasting one every 3 years or so, but have never figured it out. A gut shot one that took miles and hours tasted great, but my sons buck last year - one shot and down, never ran, we never open the guts was not an old buck - tasted bad. We have had does taste bad also, but seems to be bucks more often than does. My biggest and oldest buck tasted great, although tenderloins were a bit chewy.
We have harvested them in August September and October and haven't found a strong link with the rut.
Reality is we prefer antelope over elk and way more than deer. But about 1 in 30 just taste bad.