Transporting Deer Meat
 

Deer Hunters,
Say you traveled out of state and bagged yourself a deer at a WMA. You are 500miles away. Can you please give me step by step directions on preserving that meat . I hunt in Florida

So I have 2 questions.
1.How do you transport meat 500 miles away?

2 How long do you drain the deer in Florida where our temperatures are hot?
I want to do the butchering myself so a meat cutter is no option.
Thanks for your replys,
Chuck

RE: Transporting Deer Meat
 

Field dress it immediatley.Then since your in Florida skin it as soon as possible. Butcher and pack it in dry ice.I often drove 1200 miles and 2 days with it in dry ice without any problems

RE: Transporting Deer Meat
 

Get it cool as fast as possible, pack it in ice and you'll be ok.

RE: Transporting Deer Meat
 

What is dry ice and where do you but it?

Thanks Chuck

RE: Transporting Deer Meat
 

Dry ice is frozen co2, you can't touch it with your bare hands hence ,instant frost bite. You can get it at ice cream outlets or lookin the yellow pages under ice. You cannot let the meat come in contact with it, also when it (melts) it turns back into a gas so it doesn't soak your meat. Though you cannot lock or close your cooler to prevent these gases from exscaping or kablewy.:D Things will pop like an over inflated baloon.

If it were me. I would Pack my cooler with frozen gallon jugs of ice. a day or 2 before. then when I leave, change to fresh jugs. Then after getting the deer, skin and quarter , stick in the cooler and head home. When you get home make sure you have a fridge or something ready to put the meat in . Or just exchange frozen jugs for the ones at home.

Also on a side note which no one thought of. They sell cooler bags especially made for tuna fishing so as to keep the fish cool. Tuna will spoil alot quicker than a deer and is also a heck of alot bigger. I'm talking giant tuna here. I'll try to find them as they are not cheap but well worth any price paid.


http://www.alltackle.com/canyon_fish_bags.htm
http://www.fishermansoutfitter.com/p...-tuna-bag.aspx

RE: Transporting Deer Meat
 

Chuck, as you know i hunt Al. but live in Fl. I take my big fishing coolers and put my meat in them in those big black yard bags. I keep ice on it untill I get home. I have done this for 12 years and never had a problem. I sometimes go 2 weeks at a time.

RE: Transporting Deer Meat
 

Thanks Fellows,
I will folow the directions.
Chuck

RE: Transporting Deer Meat
 

Chuck; as moose said. clean it A.S.A.P. then Ice it down.drain the water off every day and add more Ice.I do this for several days when I'm at home also. it makes for better eating.
when I camped , I would keep my meat for two weeks at a time.it will keep and eat better.

RE: Transporting Deer Meat
 

As mentioned it should be cooled and if required deboned ASAP. I would not transport it quartered with the bone in if the temperature is above 60 and the trip home to cooling would be longer than a few hours. I would also use regular ice or milk jugs in large coolers. Another thought is the cooling units that plug into a cig lighter or PPT, they will cool pop, milk so I am sure with some ice they would do the trick if your driving yourself.

Word of caution with putting meat in garbage bags, make sure they are food safe as many use a chemical to help prevent smell and these shouldn't ever be used for your fresh meat. Supermarkets sell food safe bags, as do most butcher shopor butcher supply stores. I use the large clear butcher bags for transporting and freezing grind cuts for my game needs, they do cost a bit more but are thicker than what the supermarkets sell here.

RE: Transporting Deer Meat
 

After you pack your cooler with ice and meat put it in an old sleeping bag. The ice will last alot longer. Ice will last all weekend with it packed in a sleeping bag. Also you can use an old heavy blanket.

RE: Transporting Deer Meat
 

I regularly transport lots of deer meat 1700 miles when I go to Texas. All you do is stop every 400 miles or so and get more ice. As long as they are constantly on ice, you can go forever. Pack them in coolers and set around 2 bags of ice from a gas station per 40 lbs of meat or so.

RE: Transporting Deer Meat
 

I have field dressed, skinned, quartered meat and put the meat into garbage bags and then into ice where I have kept the meat for three days before processing it myself at my house.

I have also field dressed, skinned, quartered meat, put the meat into garbage bags for a day or for a few hours and then butchered it in my hotel room (cut into meal sized pieces, wrap twice in plastic wrap, tightly wrap in freezer paper, and label). After packaging the meat, I put it on dry ice where it kept sharp frozen for five days until I could get it to my freezer at home. My dry ice procedure:

Lay 1/2 of dry ice in bottom of cooler. Place 1/4" thickness of newspaper (the pages are laid flat, not crumpled up) on top of dry ice. Place all the meat (that fits in the cooler) on top of the newspaper. Place another 1/4" thickness of newspaper on top of the meat packages. Place the remaining 1/2 of the dry ice on top of the newspaper. Close the cooler and seal the lip of the lid with duct tape all the way around. I found that 20 LBS of dry ice sharp froze about 60 LBS of pronghorn meat (I'm guessing, two pronghorns) and lasted three days. After these three days, I opened the cooler and found that the dry ice had evaporated away down to very thin wafers. I replaced with more dry ice, sealed the cooler again, and this worked until I got home. This was wonderful. No water leaking out of the cooler. No meat bleeding into the ice water and spilling into my SUV. Don't put too much meat into a single cooler or you will have a hard time picking it up. I have read that the CO2 gas that leaks out of the cooler (not much, because of the duct tape seal) can cause the occupants of a closed vehicle to become drousy, maybe passout, maybe become asphixiated (because they are breathing CO2 and not oxygen). I don't know if this scenario is for real or just an old wives tale (an old hunter's tale, a red neck's tale?). I did roll my windows down for a few minutes when I got drowsey driving on the road, however, just to be safe.

I found dry ice cost about $1/lb in Gillette, Wyoming, in Durango, Colorado, and in McKinney, Texas where I live. I guess the price is pretty uniform. By the way. My pronghorn was pretty much cool before it was put on dry ice. If it was warmer the dry ice would not have lasted as long, I don't expect.

RE: Transporting Deer Meat
 

Chuck..what part of Fla are ya from?

RE: Transporting Deer Meat
 

Jimmy S,
Polk County. About 30 miles from Tampa. Sorry for bothering you folks. I'm going to visit a friend who lives in Missouri. He said he would help me package and butcher any meat. Does it get any better than that?;)Thanks for all the replys. Your a great bunch of folks.
Chuck

RE: Transporting Deer Meat
 

In Floridia Publix has dry ice machines, this is good for shipping in the mail, ice works in a cooler just fine. As to the rest all gave good advice, get it into a cooler with ice.A small deer minus its head and legs below the knee will fit into a 128 cooler. I do this even with bigger deer and stuff them into a standard size fridge, my extra beer fridge stands in for this use Ha Ha deer stuffed with beer. I hunt crop damage in Jul & Aug so I kill a lot of deer in warmer temps. I like to store until I have time to skin and butcher with the skin on. The above method works for me.

RE: Transporting Deer Meat
 

If you are wanting dry ice most super krogers, wal-marts, meijer now sell dry ice. Also rubbermaid makes a cooler they say will hold ice for sevan days I have it and will say that most of the ice will last about 4 days if it does not sit in direct sun.

RE: Transporting Deer Meat
 

you can get the dry ice at most krogers, wal-marts and meijers. Also rubbermaid makes a cooler that they claim will keep ice for sevan days..I have it...it will not keep for sevan days but will keep for about four if not in direct sunlight. I have also used the sleeping bag trick and have been successful with that also.

Good luck
Heather

RE: Transporting Deer Meat
 

You don't need dry ice. Just quarter the deer and put it in a ice chest and pack it in ice. As the ice melts just add more ice and drain the water off. We soak ours for up to 5-6 days like that and let the blood all drain out of the meat. It really gives it a good flavor. We hunt year around here for hogs and even during the summer we do it the same way. The trick is to clean them immediately and get them in ice as soon as possible. The last two weeks we've shot 3 hogs and didn't have any problems with the heat. We have cut up and on ice within a hour of being shot.

I will be traveling by vehicle from Texas back to California in November, how can I keep frozen venision from the processing house frozen for my 20 hour drive.

All you have to do is to have your ice chest cold before you put your meat in it. Put a couple of inches of ice in your icechest before you hunt. If you kill a deer, quarter if and put it on top of the ice and cover the venison with new ice as much as you can get in. Close the lid and leave it closed till you get home. I hunt hogs in SC and I live in PA, When I get to the outfitter I put 3 inches of ice in the bottom of my 125 qt cooler and put the cooler in the walk in fridge. All hogs are skinned and halved and hung in the walkin. When I leave, the hogs are quartered and put on top of the ice in my cooler and the cooler is filled with ice and the lid closed. It is about an 11 hour drive from SC to PA and when I get home, there isn't much water in the bottom of the cooler. I only have a coleman cooler, not one of those 5 to 6 hundred dollar coolers. The key is to put meat in a cold cooler and once you close the lid with the meat in it, keep it closed.

Normal ice will not do it for frozen meat. I put dry ice in with the frozen meat and duct tape around the lid of the cooler and have kept meat frozen much longer than 20 hours. Make sure that your cooler is full with no large empty spaces. Shredded paper on top of the meat packages does a good job of both filling the remainder of the cooler and adding some insulation.

Thanks for good info. The meat I will be carrying will be frozen already from the processor, just wanting to keep it frozen until I make it home, which non-stop is about an 18-19 hour drive. I too have the Coleman ice chest, didn't want to spring for the high dollar coolers if they are not going to perform any better than what I have.

I live in Florida and have been hunting in Florida for a while. This is how we do it. When you shoot the deer hang it up, clean it, quarter it, then throw everything in the cooler and put it on ice. And just drive home. 30lbs of ice lasts about 2 days in my cooler at about 70 degrees outside. Oops just saw the meat is already processed. That I don't know.