Total speculation here but I would assume that the stress on an animal at the time of harvest would affect meat tenderness and maybe flavor. For example chasing an antelope long distances before harvesting them or a mule deer that has really rutted hard. The couple critters I have had that were bad were handled exactly the same as all the others.
I think sometimes you just get a bad one due to what the critter had going on in its life at the time. I also think some people don’t handle them properly too if they are inexperienced. It’s hard to know for sure.
This made me think of the two worst eating bucks I've tried to eat. Both were actively chasing does when I shot them, hard in the rut. The first we watched for about an hour before finally getting up to him to shoot. No idea how long he'd been at it, but probably all night. The second one was a similar situation. You could taste both of those deer through the jalapeno/cheese in summer sausage. It was awful. I've killed a pile of whietail bucks in similar situations, and they were fine eating.
This made me think, most of the caribou seasons are closed here during the rut because the meat is unpalatable. There is no debating it. Its flat awful. I've talked to a few natives who remarked that they will watch bulls during the rut and if they are actively chasing and rutting they will avoid shooting them because they will be inedible. The true rut is like 10 days, and the bulls will lose most of their spicy flavor in a week or two post rut. The lactic acid builds up in their meat, supposedly. They don't eat for 2 weeks more or less. I've sampled a few dozen of them starting from Aug all the way through early November. There is a marketable difference in meat flavor once you hit about Sept 10. I've never killed one between Oct 1 and 20th when the season is closed, but have shot a bunch on the 21 and they were far better eating than the Sept 10-30 bulls. A fat august caribou may be one of the best eating game animals I've ever had. Out of about a dozen everyone was superb.
The blind taste test would be interesting. I can taste the flavor of all them, whether knowing or not. I will say one thing, given the choice between MD, elk, whitetail, antelope in the freezer the MD is eaten last. Put some moose, bou or sheep in there, and its still last.
A well cooked moose is almost indistinguishable from grass fed beef, IMO. I need to go get a moose roast out for dinner now...
One last note, I've considered not labeling the animal on the packages to stop high-grading the good stuff and leaving myself with a pile of lessor palatable meats.
