Do bucks taste different than doe?

I certainly can tell the difference between deer -- buck vs. doe, young vs. old. In fact, I can tell you that over time you can learn to discern between individual deer. The reason I say this is based on two things that came together in my family.

First off, I have been marking all my venison with a code for about 8 seasons. It used to be we took in so little venison that it was easy to keep track of what was what. However, about 8 years ago we started taking more than 1-2 deer a season, and things got confusing in the freezer. I settled on an easy coding system: 2 digits of year + 1 character of Alphabet so we know the first , second, etc. deer of the season.
06B is therefore the second deer taken in 2006. I mark each package as they go in the freezer.

Secondly, I started serving a dish about 4 years ago that quickly caught on with the kids. It's real easy: take a lb of venison sausage and a can of roast beef hash put them together in a skillet with a little Creole seasoning and bake for 1 hour at 400F. The dish became known as Who-Hash, because the family quickly took to guessing which deer the sausage had come from.

"07A?" asks Moose.

"07B." replies Angus.

"Well, I'm just glad it's not 05B." snorts KYHillChick. " I was getting pretty tired of that old boy."

"Sorry," I reply. "This one was 06C. I found a little in the back. She's still pretty good, ain't she?"

I can tell you that among our panel of 4 judges, it is easy to figure out mature doe vs mature buck . It is hard or nearly impossible to tell the difference between young doe and button buck. Young tastes different than old. When you're a family of 4 putting down nothing but venison every weekend all winter you get a lot of practice.

As to the whole gland thing, I am fairly certain it is a myth. I started out taking out the leg glands many years ago, more for freezing them and using them next year than anything else. It always seemed stupid to be trying to take out the glands to keep the stink from getting on the meat, but at the same time, I was stinking up my knife doing it. The fact of the matter is that the majority of the stink comes from the urine the buck pees on himself, and it collects on these oily glands. That's really the last thing I want to put on my knife.