I've never had a bad tasting deer yet and I've shot plenty of buck during the last few days of the season in December. \yeah, they smell really strong on the outside, but as long as you get them skinned out quickly, and get that musky rutty hide off them without transferring any of it onto the meat, you'll be OK.
Another thing that can make deer any any big game animal taste bad is bone-soar . It developes rather quickly if the meat is not cooled down fast enough, and what happens is, all that trapped heat within the animal makes it start to go bad from the bone outwards.
Just my experience