No amount of smothering cheddar cheese was going to save these fish tacos. Although it tasted like someone drizzled fish oil caplets inside them, I choked one down regardless, refusing to admit defeat in my wild game culinary effort.

One of the less talked about aspects of the recent popularization in wild game cuisine is the failure factor. Let’s face it, you only ever see beautifully framed (and probably Photoshopped) images of succulent venison backstraps with exotic garnishes plated on trendy flatware sitting on a rough hewn wooden table. Would it be anathema for me to admit that I don’t always enjoy eating wild game?

As a kid, my Mom almost ruined me on squirrels. Dad and I shotgunned chubby orange foxies off oak limbs on a friend’s farm. After skinning and gutting them at the kitchen sink, we’d brine them over night in the fridge. The next day, Mom would bread then pan fry each one. Carefully navigating each mouthful in search of lead shot wasn’t bad…it was the toughness of each bite. Those squirrels probably required more calories to consume than they provided.

But really, it’s not the poorly prepared fare that I’m concerned with. When I’m the least wild about wild game is when I’ve got the raw odor of the freshly processed carcass still in my nostrils.

Those fish tacos were doomed from the beginning. The oil from that meat could have lit a thousand lamps and still haunted the reciprocating saw I used to fillet it in the first place. The fish smell was so overpowering that it tainted each subsequent bite of those tacos. I had to sanitize the kitchen immediately after preparing them to cleanse my palate.

The same goes for venison from a deer that’s been gut shot…or even if it’ s a particularly strong smelling buck. The odor is too close to the taste, and the two sensations begin overlapping in a stomaching-undulating dining experience. I want to be the competent outdoorsman who savors every aspect of the hunt, but sometimes I need a buffer between the butchering and the consuming.

There are exceptions however. Every once in a while I’m tempted to take a honk off a tenderloin right out of the still steaming body cavity. The savory fragrance makes me want it right then and there. Maybe it’s got something to do with my physiology and body chemistry at the time. I don’t know.

I do know that I feel the need to admit that I’m not always wild about wild game. I’m guessing I’m not the only one either…it’s just not cool to say that in an outdoor community now partially driven by the culinary arts.