What he said is true to a degree, once an animal is dead, the meat begins to decay or rot. PERIOD. This is why the quickest cooling method that can be used should be.
The object is to control the amount and rate of rot or decay. Your best restaurants and meat suppliers will ALWAYS, ALWAYS age their meat 10-14 days. This has always been an accepted practice and will always be.
Do you honestly think that the meat that butcher is cutting in his superstore was living 10 minutes before he put it on the shelf?? BULL!!!!!!!!! His meat is aged whether he wants to admit it or not.
It may only be one or two days or maybe 5-6 but it is. He can't tell you to age it because of liability issues. How long does he let his meat sit in the cooler section of the store wrapped and waiting for us to walk by, look in the case and then buy it ??????????????????2 days, 3, 4, 5. The "use by" date is always a few days from when it was wrapped, which is a few days from when the steer was butchered. Please, how can he say not to age meat.
The difference is in how controlled the environment is.
There are two schools of thought on the subject and that is whether to age before or after freezing. One thought is to butcher the deer immediately and freeze it and if "aging" is desired, then do it in the refrigerator over a period of a few days while themeat slowly thaws out. The other of course is to let it hang for a few days before butchering.
Aging meat boils down to 2 things. Constant temperature and humidity. The more humid and the warmer the greater the chance for bacteria to grow. The colder and drier, the opposite. If I remember right and don't quote me on this, the ideals are around 36-38 degrees and 50-60% humidity.
The one thing I will agree with is to always leave the the meat a little pink on the inside. Since venison has very little fat, leaving it a little pink helps to maintain a certain moisture level.
There was this very same discussion on this board a few weeks ago and the exact same topics came up.