Meh. We have stuff that’s at least three years old in the freezer at any given time. We rotate, but there are no dates on the meat. The meat has lot numbers, and there are three different numbers in the freezer right now. One’s from this year, one two years ago (didn’t get meat last year) and one from before that. We’re still here. It loses flavor, but it’s not bad. Just double wrapped in butcher paper. Kept at, or below, zero degrees.
We date game and freeze it. I have kept deer for up to 3 years and if vacuum packed well is ‘fresh’ when thawed a sharpie pen is your friend. When I get a freezer burned piece I skin off the burnt part and cook the good part (sniff test) for the dogs. Haven’t lost a dog yet.
Been using a vacuum sealer for about a decade. But before that I had a trick using ziplock freezer bags. You fill a bucket around 3/4 the way up with cool water and submerge the bagged meat leaving a small end of the ziplock open. The water pressure will collapse all the air out of the bag and with the zipper at the waters edge have a helper finish the sealing. Watched Jimmy Huston do this with fish on TV. Works well