Meat Mystery

..so I process my own stuff for years, ensure equipment is clean, meat is well taken care of, and I don't age (straight into the freezer from the field).

My archery bull this year was in the middle of the rut and he was certainly fragrant. Took 3 hours to find him, and was in the freezer the day after the next. He was quartered and when cutting him up, there was just a few pieces in the trim bag that soured due to heat, everything else was fine. I made sure that those pieces were discarded.

We've had 2 packages of steak, and they have tasted wonderful. Our first bag of ground however was a disaster. There was definite off taste to it. I've taste tested 2 other bags by making patties and just frying them to med-well. They tasted just fine.

I'm thinking I may have missed a gland and it got into that particular bag of meat; or that for some reason that bag was off. Never really had this happen, to have just one bag be off. I'm a little concerned the 100+ of ground elk will be similar. Thoughts?

Ive had sparse packages of whitetail do that befor. A friend told be it was some of the hard fat. It kinda made sense becaue I was just grinding and packaging as I went so a bad piece would not have been split between bags. Don't know if that was possible with yours. I trim a lot harder even for burger now.

I'm not sure it makes a difference but I never grind when butchering. It's exposed to too much air for too long. I'll grind right before i'm going to eat it. I remove as much fat as possible.

What's important to me is to get it butchered as fast as possible and frozen.