I've posted about hanging deer in this forum a year or two ago. I grew up in a family owned USDA inspected slaughtering business and eventually ended up owning it until we decided to close it. Hanging beef and deer are two different things. Most hunters hang deer with their hide on and that is a big mistake. Get it checked in ASAP and skin it as soon as you can. Even beef that's hung for a while, is not hung with it's hide on. The hide holds heat and people will say how they pack the inside with ice, do this, or that, but nothing cools the deer completely like pulling the hide. Aging or hanging is done for the enzymes in the meat to break down the meat to make it tender. Doing this with beef works as the fat helps keep moisture in the meat while the enzymes break down the tissues. Deer have no fat, or none to bother mentioning and hanging a deer only dries the meat out. This is how I process my own deer and have found it to yield the best tasting venison.
1. If I kill a deer during archery I bring it home with the guts in it. I do the same in shotgun.
2. I then check the deer on line if archery or take it to a checking station if shotgun season after I gut it at home leaving the hide and head on
3. I skin the deer
4. I gut the deer if it was archery.
5. I wash it and let it hang one day (even if it's warm, the air temp is still usually 40+ degrees cooler than a live deer's body temperature so it's cooling down and you can't cool an animal carcass too fast or it will trap heat around the bones especially in the rounds)
6. I cut the deer up the next day boning it completely out, then steak it. all meat is vacuum packed. Meat for grinding is frozen for at least a month before grinding.
