Glad you got out there and saw a couple man!!! We opted to skip opening weekend this year due to some ridiculous crazy planning. High Cascades season was a bust, so it is time to bring on the blacktails. Good luck out east.
Fred I think deer tastes fantastic, but it depends on the deer and it depends very heavily on how you process it. If it is hung properly, and you take the time to cut out the hard fat and silver skin, it is a very tender and tight grained meat. As in it cuts relatively effortlessly with a butter knife tender. It has a little bit heavier flavor than a beef steak will, but I don't notice any gamy flavor to most of the cuts. The burger can be a little bit gamy if you don't mix it with anything, but our burger tends to be made up of the scrape odds and end pieces which seem to hold the gamy flavor.
The flavor, and texture, of the meat will also change a little bit depending on what the deer has been eating and how old it is. Whether it is living up in the mountains and eating forage, or is there a farmers field close by where they can eat lush grasses, or is it a mulie from the east where there is a lot of sage to munch on.