Most of the people that I know that harvest deer take 'em to a locker plant. Most locker plants, when making sausage add pork with the ground meat, add pork fat, thereby reducing the dryness with the ground pork.

The one way that I am able to tolerate venison, I put the meat in a marinade, one cup cheap bourbon or rot gut whiskey, a half cup of brown sugar, and a lot of minced garlic and ginger root, sometimes I add a cup of orange juice to the mix. Smoke it and you're good to go.

When I butcher a deer, I cut everything into steaks and roasts. What cannot pass for steaks, chop, or roasts gets ground and heavily herbed and spiced. I will keep some of the ground meat unseasoned, as that is what I add to chili and the like.

Not as good as tree rat, but I can eat it anyway.