jjt

antelope is great as long as you take the advice of others in this thread

#1 dont run one before killing it
#2 skin it immediately
#3 quarter it and put it on ice (coolers work great)


just a side note if you are caping it for a mount do the best you can at cooling the hide down also as the tend to have a lot of slippage if you do not

Between my wife and myself we shoot and eat 6 speed goats a year

121553

I would not say its the best eating game meat there is and by no means is it the worst, some are good tasting and some are just dang right strong, I am sure as previously said that it has to be properly cared for and get it in the cooler ASAP, but that goes with any game, "Is how its handled" before you freeze it. Sometimes hunters under estimate the heat on the priaries and at times it gets boiling hot in the afternoons and then at night your freezing you arses off. Did it this year. A lot of these ranchers beg hunters to shoot these lopes (lots of does and fawns) as they been eating his alpha he puts out for his cattle and they probaly won't make it through the winter and those are some pretty tasting ones if your wanting to pop some food, but if you want a trophy, the sage would be your better choice most of the time, I guess the same would apply to mulies, but get there quik cause they wise up fast. A lot depends on what they been eatin. You are what you eat.
Skeeter, I be waiting for those lopes on this side of the border when you miss as I'll be in the Sweetgrass area waiting for them just along the Alberta border. Good luck
Oneye, there is an ole timer that ages his meat the same way here and he wanted me to do it on my game this year as he has a restaurant and a cooler for me to hang it, it may be perkectly alright to do this as some actually do it, but I'll pass. I'll cool it 5-7 days and then its in the freeze. Bobby

skeeter 7MM

C'mon bobby you know better "I don't miss!!!" Best of luck to yeah, not sure if I will put in for lopers this fall or not.

Dirt2

I rank antelope ahead of deer (muley or whitetail) but behind elk. I have seen one antelope out of about 30 killed in our family that wasn't good eating, in fact it was awful (an old buck, just missed B&C). I killed him in his bed and took good care of the meat, but it tastes like it has lime spread all over it.

I think one big key is how you hunt the things. Some people like to play WWII armored assault with antelope, chasing them in vehicles and shooting them on the run, and other such nonsense. I wouldn't be wild about eating an antelope that had been run around like that.

One little trick I have recently come on for "taming" my bad eater, is to slice up the steaks and soak them 24 hours in hard apple cider. Then pound, bread, and fry in olive oil. Makes that old buck taste like something in a fancy restaurant.

121553

Skeeter, I knew that.

Dirt2, welcome to the board, there is some thruth in what your saying. I have heard of vihicles running down the lopes. Dughhhhhhh, I wonder why they taste like that. Good luck guys, Bobby

Montana Bob

It might be an aquired taste.I shot a goat in the rut. The same nasty musky smell it reeked of was the same as the meat.
A little 2 strong for me. Maybe if shot at a different time of the season?
[:'(]

j3k2c1

never shoot 'em during the rut! even a deer in the rut will taste like crap, elk too!

skeeter 7MM

j3k2c1, about the only animal I have had that had a poor taste which was harvested during the rut is mule deer and caribou. The rest are AOK by me

BTM

I've heard people say it's fantastic or lousy, never just so-so. As for me, both of my goats were awful. (Yes, they were clean, fast kills, and they were skinned and in the coolere within an hour.) They were both sage fed and near the rut, so maybe that was a factor. Wish they tasted better, because I love hunting them.

j3k2c1

Here I hunt mulies, so that would be deer to me.
But I have eaten a 3 bull elk shot in the rut and they were putrid, but we ate it all because we had shot them.
Teddy Roosevelt also agrees that elk in the rut are inedible. IF you read his book The Wilderness Hunter or Hunting Trips of a Ranchmen you find that he states that many times and quite clearly.