ORIGINAL: danowak
I live in South Florida and hunt in the Big Cypress Preserve (in between hurricanes). It is mostly always hot. I have a 30 minute drag out of the woods after field dressing and a 30 minute drive to the check station. Depending on the wait, it might be another 30 minutes before I can get out of there, and an hour drive home. That's 2 1/2 hours between gutting and starting to skin the animal.The biggest challenge for me is keeping the deer cool while I get it home. I take a cooler full of2 litre soda bottles with frozen water in them. They will last all day in there, and I can pack them in the body cavity during transport without worrying about spoilage. Afterwards I just wash them off and use them again.
When hunting in VA before during a late November warm snap I had the same situation. Instead of getting soda bottles I just bought 15 or 20 lbs of ice and tucked the bags into the body cavity.
I figured this was the way things were done. I am just amazed that there aren't any deer processors around here. Does Florida have some regulation about processing third party or wild meat?