Venison is extremely lean obviously. It lacks the fat marbling within the meat to keep itself juicy. With that said, its a very healthy red meat, but requires different cooking methods then beef does in order to keep it moist. Crock pots/slow cookers really help venison out. Doing venison with some sort of liquid base that it can absorb, takes a lot of the margin of error out in terms of cooking it to the point of being tough and dry. My jerky recipe is marinated for days in a cocktail of brown sugar, kosher salt, ground cloves, nutmeg, and ginger. The blood from the meat combines with these ingredients to form a thick marinade that the meat absorbs. The meat is then washed clean, and evenly covered in Worcestershire sauce, black pepper, and assaulted hard with old bay. The hung vertically from steel racks over a metal tub in my smokehouse. That tub is where is keep the wood smoldering. When you bite into my jerky, it has the absolute texture of jerky, but isn't like trying to grind leather with your teeth. My ingredients also don't leave the meat with a flavor that in unique to one ingredient. They meld together for a very old fashioned savory taste.