I need a little help from the crowd. We have a group of 5 guys going to northwest WY for an elk hunt. It doesn' t look like the weather is going to be very cold.(hi 55 low 25). If we are successful, what tips would you have for transporting back home (12 hrs away). We have thought about boning out ourselves and hauling back for processing in a couple pickups packed with ice or hauling a trailer with a couple of horizontal freezers. I would assume it will cost a pretty penny to have it processed and shipped back. Any thoughts?

thanks

Luckyone,
I wouldn' t worry to much about it,if you guys get one or 5.You should get it back to camp skin it,1/4 and put in game bags let it hang in the shade if it is getting down to 25 temp at night it will be good for 2-3 days.If you shoot one on the first day,I would take it to a prosseser for him to keep in his freezer,they will do that for not much cost.

Rule of thumb is that you need to get that meat temp below 45 degf. Like BBJ said, if it' s getting cold at night you should be ok for a couple days if you keep it in the shade during the day. Bring along a big container of ground black pepper. If it' s warm during the day, the flies will egg up your meat if you don' t keep them off. Rub the qtrs down with ground black pepper right after you skin it to help keep the flies off. As long as you can keep the dry it' ll skin over and be fine for a couple days. To haul it home bring along a couple BIG coolers and throw some dry ice on top of your meat. I usually put some newspaper or something similar between the dry ice and the meat (if it isn' t cut and wrapped). Dry ice will freezer burn your meat if it touches directly on it.

Good luck!

quarter it/them and debone as much as you want. Then just put in a cooler with ice for driving home. Take it home and have it processed there, or do it yourself. I' ve been doing this same thing for years and have never had a problem. Although dry ice is great for a really long trip, a 12 hour drive is nothing major and I wouldn' t hastle with the dry ice.

When transporting it don' t lie the quarters directly on the truck bed, set them on a pallet or something allowing the air to circulate beneath them. Good luck.

We went to Montana a couple of years ago for a 3 week stay. In our party we had 3 antelope and 4 deer the 1st week. Then a couple of elk towards the end of the hunt. We had brought a small freezer that ran on either electricity or battery. Hung the animals and when they were ready we all sat around in the nice warm rec hall (we' d rented a Forest Service cabin for the three week stay) and watched satellite TV (World Series was on) and had a great time boning them out and wraping and packaging everything. What a way to hunt and camp.

Put the packages in the freezer and once it was well frozen, took them out and put in our coolers, and put in the next batch of packages. Opened the coolers at night to help keep everything frozen and just kept everything cooled and covered during the day (we had 60degree days and 25-30 at night). Worked out great.