My best guess re: getting the bad smell and slime so quickly is because it was left in heat rather than refrigerated or stored in a cool area. I've haven't experienced that with any of my meat except with ground beef left out on during hot summer days. My high meat gets rather stinky after a few weeks, IIRC. Of course, VT is often rather cold and I tend to keep the heater set relatively low. Stink fish only seems to take a few days to get slimy and somewhat stinky.
BTW, the Inuit reportedly prefer high meat that's more than a year or more old. I noticed that the odor and taste of high meat that gets this old is milder, so maybe that's why. It also is very much broken down, with lots of liquid at that point, so maybe easy digestability is another thing they like about >1yr high meat, I don't know.