What's for Dinner Deer?

There is another element in our discussion about hunting in the Adirondacks pertaining to deer: venison is actually widely considered to be "more healthy" than beef. A simple Google search yields multiple hits each with a similar theme: for a similar amount of meat venison provides an equal amount of protein with less total and saturated fat. From what I could find on the National Nutrient Database this seems to be the case. I looked up ground products, except for the fish, which are some of the less healthy meat products out there.

Now there is a huge controversy over which kinds of fats promote heart health and whether or not eating foods with cholesterol is bad, but from the chart it would seem that venison is right in the mix with the other meats. In my opinion, fish is the clear winner, but chicken and venison aren't that far off from each other. I also picked 90/10 ground beef which is less popular than the 80/20 or ground chuck which are even higher in fat. So simply by the numbers, why not eat venison?

It also bears mentioning that the deer that are killed and eaten spent their lives in more or less of the environment that evolution sculpted them for. Cows are not: we have bred them to eat corn (Ew!) and we feed them antibiotics to keep them alive for just a couple years. Cows are just as disease prone as deer, as proved by occasional meat recalls on ground "beef."

Finally, I also will maintain that hunting deer will create more work for butchers. Yes, some people butcher them in their garage, but there are lots of easy (or manly) things that people could do in their garage (like changing the oil in their car) that most people don't bother with. Butchers also have the equipment to make specialized products like sausages.