Questions about traveling for a hunt.
 

I've never actually hunted out of state, or more than 100 miles from home(North Florida). I'm in the beginning stages of planning a hunt with a buddy somewhere in ID, MT, or WY in 2018.

It's a lot to take in and try to prepare for, and I have a TON of questions. One of the first I have is if in deed we do actually kill something, how the hell do we get it back home 2000+ miles?

Do you try to go ahead and process everything there, pack into a cooler and ship it?

Partially ship some of it, and take some back in a cooler to check onto our flight home?

Freeze it first before shipping?

I hope these aren't stupid or obvious questions, it's just something I've never got to do, so I have no idea.


THANKS!!!

Jordan

I drive. Therefore, my animals are processed. A requirement by my outfitter. And I take it all home frozen. If I tag out early I have it cut in what I like. If I font have time I have the animal bulk packaged.
And I even have taken an animal that was boned as I harvested 2 hrs before we had to leave. Just a big cooler and ice.

We bring extra coolers and you always can get ice along the way.
But then I've never been more than 20 hrs from home.
I've never shipped.
JW

Shipping game home is very very expensive. A good friend just took a huge bull elk in Idaho last year. He was prepared. He bought a good used chest freezer, they are usually pretty cheap. He put it in the back of his pick up along with a small gas generator. He had it butchered in Idaho and while it was being butchered he had the freezer plugged in to an outlet. The meat was wrapped and quick frozen when he put it in the already cold freezer. Every so often he would start the generator with the freezer plugged into it as he drove home to PA and when he stopped for the night he would plug it into an outlet where he stayed. When he got home, all he had to do was transfer the meat from the freezer in his pick up to his home freezer. If you plan on flying to your hunt, be advised it is extremely expensive to fly your meat home. This method is becoming more common and makes sense.

I grew up in CO but spent a lot of time on the east coast. I went home hunting as often as I could and I hauled a lot of deer/elk and antelope back east. I got some good coolers and boned the meat. Put 5 or 6 lbs of dry ice in the coolers and seal them good including putting duct tape around the lid seam. Meat will keep 3 or 4 days like this. if you'll be longer you may need to augment the dry ice with some regular ice and keep the cooler sealed.

I never had my game processed since I do all that myself. never lost an ounce of game meat either due to spoiling. Keep it chilled and as dry as possible and get home without stopping at the casino etc...

I figured that it would be expensive to ship but how expensive is the question lol. With the window of time we have, I don't know if driving would be an option. Google maps says its 36 hours of drive time, which I think would be a little too much. I don't think that I want to give up 4 days to driving. It may just be that we have to find some where closer as much as I really had my heart set on going out there. I'm sure a big cooler would be just as expensive to fly back with as it would be to ship it.

It would be more expensive to fly you meat home than to ship it but that is expensive as well. I have taken trips that were 24 hrs of driving time. 36 hours is only 12 hours more. Several times I have driven straight through to and from SC a 12 hour drive while in my late 60s and the last trip 70 YO. We drove straight through. As long as there is more people than you you can just each drive for so many hours then the other person drives while you sleep. I suspect you are younger than I am and I didn't mind it. However you have to do what suits you. The drive is as much fun as the destination.

Drive it! Do it multiple times every year all across the country. Leaving next Saturday morning for a 26 hour drive to Wyoming for antelope. I'm assuming you're going with an outfitter if you're flying. Don't see how in the world anyone could do other wise and be able to take all the gear needed to stay in the mountains. The meat is one thing, but you also have to consider antlers if you get one as well. Seems like too much hassle to fly it all. Not to mention, you will be relying on someone else to take full care of your meat in transit. I cut my own, use plenty of ice with dry ice to top it off when hauling it home. I don't even like the thought of a processor dealing with my animal. Too many horror stories there, but to me, doing it yourself is actually part of the experience that you should do yourself if possible.

I guess I should have also clarified when I said process, I didn't mean taking it somewhere for someone else to do it. I've never done that, nor do I plan to. I just meant process in the sense of cutting, trimming, and bagging if I was at home and getting ready to freeze it.

Thanks for all the help!

-J

I've flown round trip twice with meat to bring home. I'm driving from now on!


Things to keep in mind:
- Your first two checked bags are fairly cheap, however that covers you bow/gun and clothes. Now you get into excess baggage fees, which run around $100 per bag, and they have to weigh 50 pounds or less or they ALSO become overweight, so closer to $200/bag. for an elk you will need 4-7 of these to stay under 50 lbs.


- If it isn't frozen, then you have an extra issue, if the box leaks "juice" they will refuse it. That includes any connections.


- Dry ice is typically ok, but 5lbs per bag. If the meat is frozen it will last the flight in wax boxes. I brought home my elk like this and including a long layover in Chicago when it sat on the tarmac, in the sun, on a 70 degree day, for 3 hours.


- You can ship it home and given baggage fees it may be worth checking. When I got my elk in ID, a fellow hunter got one, he was from Boston, he overnighted it, this was back in 2004. It was I think $800 door to door, but he had the piece of mind that it made it.


- You can ship your clothes home to save a box, you don't need them quickly. I packed a box with the antlers, and most of my clothes and UPS'd it home for pretty cheap.

You should also check with your outfitter as many of them do shows all across the country. I know a couple that pack meat/antlers back for clients. Your outfitter may also have another client that is willing to haul your animal back to someplace close or within a few hundred miles.

From experience, it cost $1000 to fly Elk meat from west to east. overnight UPS.

It depends on what animal you are hunting. I completely cut up and packaged two prong horn antelope in my hotel room in Gillette, Wyoming, in October 2004. Put a bunch of dry ice on it. Got home 4 days later, via SW Wyoming, Durango Colorado, and then home to near Dallas, Texas. The meat was frozen rock solid.

Put dry ice in bottom of ice chest, 1/4 inch of newspaper over the dry ice, your meat on top of the newspaper, another 1/4 inch of newspaper on top, more dry ice on top of that. It works great. No water from melting ice.

When I elk hunt I skin and quarter my elk at kill site. Back off the mountain, in town, I wash my elk off in the shower and put in game bags. I then put in a cooler with dry ice as described above BUT I limit how much dry ice I use so the elk meat doesn't freeze but stays cold. I then butcher and package the first day I am back home. I do all the processing myself.

I agree that part of the pleasure is the drive with your buddies. The journey is an adventure.

I can not believe you ask someone to rinse your kill in a hotel shower......I am thinking maybe a car wash....or outside hose. Living in Montana I have heard some crazy things, but this is up there with the best of them.

I didn't ask anyone to rinse my kill in a hotel shower . . . I rinsed it in the shower of the hotel room I had rented. I agree it is not the best system. I would like to find some place where I can connect a short hose from a clothes washer that I can use to rinse the meat in something other than a hotel room shower. Maybe I just haven't looked hard enough.

Have to admit, I know I haven't seen it all or done it all, but that is one I don't think I would have ever heard or seen. I can see it now, maid comes in the next day and spots blood you missed on cleanup, manager calls the police, you are tracked down and arrested for murder and disposal of a body or some other crazy thing. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to contain my innerds from laughing so hard if that happened to someone and I heard about it.
As to the post, I, like most on here seem to do also, drive 90% of the time to my hunts. Or at least to the state such as Alaska when I drive to the closest air field for my drop hunt. I always take a couple of gallons of vinegar/water solution to rinse off my skinned and deboned meat then pack it in the coolers with dry ice. one year, back in the mid 90's, dad and I didn't have a lot of time for driving to and from Colorado due to a serious jump in work so we only had a week to Elk hunt. We flew in. We both took nice sized bulls that year and had the meat shipped home. We compared the cost to check the meat in on a direct flight home with us and it would have cost almost $200 more than it did to overnight it home to mom. It got there 3 hours before us. I couldn't even fathom what it would cost now to check it in on a flight.

Just because you "had rented" the room, you can not do whatever you choose...have a little decency man. I go through Gillett a few times a year, I know there are a few car washes, plus I know they would do a better job then a hotel shower. I was talking with a buddy here in Glasgow, he did beat your story though, back a few years, some idiots rented a motel room in town, they got their bucks, but the weather changes, bitter cold, they did not want the deer to freeze, so they brought them into the motel room and layed them on a tarp....some folks do not have a clue.

No, a car wash would not do a better job than a shower!! Car washes recycle cycle their water and they do not sanitize it. Do you want to wash your venison off with water that has road salt and road crud in it? A bit of blood going down the drain is no worse that the crud and bacteria from your body going down the drain. Actually, unless the person who rented the motel or hotel room destroy or trash it there is no problem with washing game in the shower. Just in case you don't know, a bathtub is the favorite place for poachers to butcher their jack lighted deer! Lets not try to impose your sensitivities on others.

Wrong. Maybe where you live, but not where I live. Waste travels into street sewers where I live, just turn the hose to rinse, let it spray out any soap or wax for a minute or so, then spray away. I would bet most car washes in Montana and Wyoming, are like that, maybe Denver or somewhere else in Colorado, but most small town car washes are like the one I described.

I doubt it! Many car washes recycle water because of the expense of paying for water. Regardless, there is not a thing wrong with washing meat in the shower of a motel or hotel room. What comes off the meat is probably cleaner than what comes off many of the people who use the shower.

So you condone this behavior? So, as a former CO we should respect game laws, but when it comes to respecting private property, not so much? And just because you doubt it, your still wrong...LOL.

transporting meat
 

I moved from New Hampshire to Tucson, AZ just after a Moose hunt. I loaded the frozen packaged meat in the small freezer and packed it with blankets and loaded it on the moving van. Still frozen when it arrived!

I grew up in CO but spent a lot of time on the east coast. I went home hunting as often as I could and I hauled a lot of deer/elk and antelope back east. I got some good coolers and boned the meat. Put 5 or 6 lbs of dry ice in the coolers and seal them good including putting duct tape around the lid seam. Meat will keep 3 or 4 days like this. if you'll be longer you may need to augment the dry ice with some regular ice and keep the cooler sealed.

mthusker:


You are under the mistaken impression that I abused this property or damaged this property -- the hotel room. I don't think that was the case. I didn't leave a bunch of crap in the shower. I cleaned up after myself. What do you suppose I do with my meat at home? I butcher it, in my own house. I clean up after myself when I am done. The only thing that is different in the instance I described in Gillette was I did this in my hotel room and rinsed the meat in the shower tub rather than in my kitchen sink at home.


I will allow this is dubious behaviour. But life is not all black and white: it is not all a matter of "this is OK but that is totally beyond the pale." Again, I cleaned up after myself. I actually showered in the shower the next morning. I bet the maids and later occupants could never have deduced what I had done.


I guess I would add some more details, in case this is relevant. I had field dressed the animals at the kill site and had skinned and quartered them in the field. Thus I was taking skinned quarters of pronghorn into the hotel room: no guts, no hair. As I say, I have done the exact same thing in my home numerous times, the only difference being I used the hotel shower-tub instead of a kitchen sink to rinse the meat. Clean-up after the job is the key.

You do not have the right to do what ever you wish in a rented motel room. I think most people would agree, sleeping, eating, drinking, that kind of stuff, not cleaning your game. No sense to argue, I am not ever going to agree with your lack of common sense.

Lol...how's it any different then if I bought a t-bone at the store, brought it back to the hotel to BBQ and rinsed it off in the sink before I seasoned it and put it on the grill?

You're not American are you?

No sense trying to be rational with an irrational person. Just part of the touchy feely crowd who get insensed over nothing. Washing blood down the bathtub drain is probably cleaner than washing body dirt down the drain.

It is called RESPECT....apparently something you boys know little about. If you get permission to do so from owner or manager then that is fine. Sneaking it in, naw that's wrong....even if you can not see it.

Get over yourself!!

Really? Thanks, coming from a plumbing family, I had no idea of that. Have you found any car washes in Montana or Wyoming that use recycled water....there is one in Billings, just built it a couple years ago. I am sure, carrying bags of game into a sleeping room, a drop of blood is never spilled. I am guessing that if you asked at motel, they would instruct you to use hose. Just because your wrong, you need to call someone irrational? Dang....if I could just be as smart as you...lol.

Sadly, you just proved you can not!

Really? Coming from you? LOL. You obviously do not know why most common sense folks would not want you rinsing your kill in THEIR shower.....the fact that it is not made for rinsing meat off, hair, tissue, debris, these are things that clog drains, I guess they did not teach that in school. Why not take a couple five gallon jugs, fill with water and rinse them that way if your afraid of car washes. I know that is a pretty irrational thought, but hey, that's me.