man i have never aged any meet unless it just takes a few days to butcher it. but what we do is take hog meat and soak it over night or so in a mix of dole pinaple juice and brown sugar mix. what we do is heat the juice on the stove just to WARM IT NOT HOT! and add brown sugar to your taste more for more sweet so on.. and mix untill all sugar is dissolved then soak the meat in it in the fridge and just keep flipping the meat now and then and then take a cajun injector and shoot it up with more of the mix and then cook as you want slow cook on the grill med heat smoke at 250 till done bake, broil or what ever but man as said above you'll give one up for more. i also just take meat throw it in the crock pot ( not crocks pot!) and slow cook all day in bbq sauce till meat just falls appart about 6 hrs that too is soooo gooood. man now i gotta go kill a pig this week dang it i'm outta meat.
ps we like the gamey taste we gring deer and make burgers and hamberger helper and ground deer and ground wild pork mix one pound of each add spices to your taste a egg and some bread crumbs and bake in a meatloaf pan @350 till done and oh my meat loaf fit for a king! they way we look at it is we know what we are gettin when we kill it or our friends do, but even when we have to go to the meat market and we know the people there you still really never know what it is or whats been done to it or what kind of junk its been injected with and or fed. man now i'm hungry.
I've never killed a hog and had to worry with it, but as for deer I also like to ice them for several days. It can be a pain keeping enough ice on them when it is early in the season and warm, especially if you're out in the woods for several days, but it's worth the effort.
I've found that if the deer runs after you shoot it, or you shoot it after its been running from dogs, it will taste stronger due to all the adrenaline in the muscles. We usually leave those on ice a couple more days. But if you drop it in its tracks, usually 3-4 days is plenty.
Some guys we hunt with like to put rock salt on the ice as they add it to regulate the temp, like you do when making ice cream. They'll loosely wrap the meat in black plastic bags before icing it. I've never eaten any of their venison, but they swear by it.
Ours turns out so good, if you put it on top of your head your tongue will beat your brains out trying to get to it!
P.S. I wouldn't mind getting with some of you hog hunters and trying out any of these methods on one I might kill!
usually the build up from lactic acids can cause bad taste in the meat!
