Stinky meat, spoiled?

I shot my elk late in the evening after I had to chase him over a mile due to a bad shot. This wasn’t my first choice but it happened and I had to finish the job. This all took place over 40 min in a sage flat and then up a high ridge where I was able to get a second shot in him to make him lay down. Then another 25 min to get close enough to put one in his neck to finally put him down. In order to keep up with him after the first shot I ditched my pack with all of my gear including my knives. So at 6:45 I left him on the ridge to get my pack and partner. By the time I got back with my partner it was about 9. We looked until Midnight but were unable to locate him in the sage. We were both exhausted and it was cold (25 degrees) so we opted to come back in the morning. We found him at first day light about 12 hours after he died. He had a flesh woound, one in his throat, and the neck shot. No holes into the vitals or guts. Upon quartering him up we noticed the elk blood smelled. We had him off the hill into the shade by 930 and by 12 it was to the processors it was getting a strong odor. It was starting to get warm (60 degrees) He was backed up but they got it cut up that evening and in the freezer. I had kept the tenderloin in our refrigerator and made it for dinner. It had an off smell and taste and I was concerned.

They processor threw about half of it away saying it was spoiled. All total I got about 100lbs of meat back. Tonight we had the first package of burger and it has a minor odor and a different taste from what elk I have had before. Both times I have eaten it no one got sick.

I have had to do this before with whitetail with leaving them overnight with the guts in and didn’t have any issues. I have also chased white tails long distance with thier adrenaline running and never noticed this problem. We had one that was in full rut that smelled similar and wasn’t edible due to the strong odor. This bull was with 25 cows but didn’t appear to be rutting. It was October 25th so the rut was well over. Is this off taste from spoiled meat? Why would an elk spoil so much faster than a whitetail?

Big muscles and thick hide.

If it doesn't smell right,I'm not feeding it to my family

Could be a result of him running so far after the shot. He was pumped full of adrenalin, and that meat isn't as good as meat of a quick kill. Only you can make the call if it is safe to eat. Try soaking it in ice water in the fridge for a day or two. Dump the water when it gets bloody, and replace with fresh ice water. If it has a strong taste after soaking several days in ice water, then I wouldn't want to eat it myself.

A lot of what we got back was burger so soaking is out. I have a feeling that it is the most expensive labor intensive trapping bait I’ve ever used.

An animal with the body mass of an elk retains a ton of heat- you not only have that thick hide but also relatively high mass relative to surface area which means heat just doesn’t dissipate quickly. We used to necropsy elk in Wyoming over the winter for a disease research project. When we started, they would shoot them Sunday evening and haul them to an old unheated barn. We would drive down Monday morning and get started around 11:00. Even at -25, every one of the damn things were turning green and spoiled. We had to change to same-day euthanasia because we couldn’t leave them whole overnight even at those temperatures.

Laelkhunter said:

Could be a result of him running so far after the shot. He was pumped full of adrenalin, and that meat isn't as good as meat of a quick kill. Only you can make the call if it is safe to eat. Try soaking it in ice water in the fridge for a day or two. Dump the water when it gets bloody, and replace with fresh ice water. If it has a strong taste after soaking several days in ice water, then I wouldn't want to eat it myself.

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The elk I’ve shot that ran a distance before the kill were all tough, but I didn’t notice a change in flavor.

I’d say the meat started to spoil.

The body heat can not dissipate through that hide and hair. It would have to at least be skinned and quartered and laid out on some poles/trees/limbs off of the ground. I'd say that you have ~100 pounds of spoiled meat.

Yep, elk are huge compared to a deer and there is no comparison in how you can leave a deer overnight. Elk need to be opened up, quartered and the meat off the ground to allow proper cooling or you'll end up with sour meat on parts and spoiled on anything that was on the ground like yours was.

An elk can be left overnite if conditions are favorable and it is done right. Not recovering one overnite is a different scenario. mtmuley

Adrenalin isn’t what changes the taste of the meat on an animal that’s been run hard. Look up the term “dark cutter”. It’s a function of glycogen consumption.

https://meat.tamu.edu/2013/01/22/dark-cutting-beef/

Also , relative to the elk. Ruminant animals continue to produce heat from the fermentation in their stomachs, even after they die. Large muscled animals with a thick, insulative hide hold that heat in.

I guess I was half right about animals that have been run. The meat is NOT as good as animals that died quickly, by not as good I meant the meat being tougher, not tasting badly or smelling bad. I should have tried to explain a little better. The adrenaline causes the meat to be tougher, as others have correctly stated, but again it doesn't change the flavor only the tenderness. Since the meat processor had to trash some of the meat due to spoilage, it's possible it is a total loss.

I’ve shot bear, whitetail, and antelope before and never had this be a problem. After 25 successful years afield I thought this trip would of been easier and I had it mostly figured out. I greatly under estimated the differences. Looks like I have a lot of lessons to grow from as I only am going to get to eat my humble pie this year. Thanks for the replies everyone.

Elk have hollow hair which is the best insulation you can find. Remember the stories about frontiersmen surviving in below freezing weather by gutting the critter that was just shot and sleeping in the body cavity. They're great stories and couldn't be better if they were true! Maybe some are. GJ

I have seen them go bad if left overnight when it is below zero. A calf too.
I lost my 1/2 of last archery bucks meat left to find the next day. And it was on snow when I found it the next morning @ 25 degrees....

You want to trust your nose.

Its actually pretty easy for elk to spoil due to their sheer mass. The big muscle groups, especially the hind quarters, are big enough to insulate themselves. I've heard it called "bone rot", but it really doesn't have anything to do with the bone. Its just that the meat on the outermost portion of the quarter can cool but the meat deep inside, around the bone, doesn't shed heat fast enough and spoils. The best thing is to always get the meat down the mountain and on ice immediately, but I've left elk overnight too. But that is also a lot of work. If you're leaving one overnight, at a minimum you'll want to field dress it, bone out one hind quarter (either take it with you or hang it in a tree), and roll the elk over and skin the other hind quarter. I've done this a couple times in fairly mild temperatures and didn't lose any meat to spoilage.

Elk hunting is a lot of fun, but as soon as you squeeze the trigger or release that arrow, it becomes hard work. But it's good work.

hank4elk said:

I have seen them go bad if left overnight when it is below zero. A calf too.
I lost my 1/2 of last archery bucks meat left to find the next day. And it was on snow when I found it the next morning @ 25 degrees....

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Left a gutted calf elk lay on the ground when it was 10 below and the ground side went gamey on me. Lesson learned.

Boning the meat can actually make it easier to spoil, but pulling/skinning the legs and hanging them lets the air get around all sides and the exposed bone can radiate the heat.

The problem is in your first sentence in the first post. You made a bad shot. If you've learned anything from this experience it's to never take a bad shot. I know it's hard to pass up a shot on an elk after hunting hard, but you must. Get as close as you can and put one through both lungs.

ElkStalker said:

The problem is in your first sentence in the first post. You made a bad shot. If you've learned anything from this experience it's to never take a bad shot. I know it's hard to pass up a shot on an elk after hunting hard, but you must. Get as close as you can and put one through both lungs.

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Easy to say sitting behind your key board. You don’t know what happened and why. You should make assumptions that you don’t know about. I took a good shot, anyone who left thier keyboard and has been afield has had things go sideways even with the best of circumstances.