question on how to best preserve meat in the field Options

[JLW]

ok so you have an ealy tag in a unit with warm weather in october.....
you hike in x amount of miles lets say 4-5 rough miles
you find a buck of your worth and lay the smack down.
the temps are now in the 90's and now the work begins.
you get him boned out and bag the meat and start your trek back to the truck.
i know it's best to cool the meat as quick as possible.
so the up and down miles take about 40 min. around 3 hr or so back to the truck.

how long do you have before the meat will be ruined in 90 deg weather?
what is the best method to bag or store the meat while hiking?
i know inside my pack gets really hot.
even the ice in my camelback don't last in the heat
i know these questions might seem silly to some but just want to know.
thanks,
James

[My Rights As An ...]

The faster you get the clean meat out and on ice, the better. If it takes that long, then you may want to make sure you get some game bags and strap the meat on the outside of your pack in the game bags, or leave your pack open if it gets really hot. Keeping the meat clean is just as important, in my opinion, as how fast you get it out. If you are really bad at butchering in the field and leave lots of hair, insides, urine, etc on the meat, it will not matter if you get it out in 2 hours or 3, the damage has already begun. Keep your meat clean, take the extra minute to pack it properly in a game bag and not in plastic like a ziploc or a tarp. Let it breathe. Then, when you get in back to camp, get it on ice ASAP! This has never failed me.

[jeremyb]

The faster you get the clean meat out and on ice, the better. If it takes that long, then you may want to make sure you get some game bags and strap the meat on the outside of your pack in the game bags, or leave your pack open if it gets really hot. Keeping the meat clean is just as important, in my opinion, as how fast you get it out. If you are really bad at butchering in the field and leave lots of hair, insides, urine, etc on the meat, it will not matter if you get it out in 2 hours or 3, the damage has already begun. Keep your meat clean, take the extra minute to pack it properly in a game bag and not in plastic like a ziploc or a tarp. Let it breathe. Then, when you get in back to camp, get it on ice ASAP! This has never failed me.

Totally agree...

[AZbowhunter629]

The best way to preserve meat is, first off, get the hide off the animal as quick as possible. You can gut your deer or de-bone it. I like de-boning, that way I can carry no bone wieght, just meat with me. If you de-bone, you don't have to gut it at all, just start skinning right away (they make some DVD's on this subject too that can buy) You can get ALL the meat this way, you can even get the tenderloins if you do it right, and you don't deal with the guts at all. All that is left is a skeleton and guts inside it.

If you rather gut it and are more familiar with that method, be sure to gut it first as soon as possible, then get that hide off ASAP.

Go to Walmart and buy a few packs of basic white pillow cases. Pillow cases are more durable than game bags, they breath perfectly, they keep the flies and the dirt out. And they are durable enough to be tied shut and strapped on a frame pack...or you can sling them over your shoulder and carry them out that way too. You could put a whole deboned coues deer in 2 pillow cases, easily. I put an entire de-boned elk last October in about 4 or 5 pillow cases (50 lbs of meat per bag). Also-- go to the hardware store and get a few packs of the little rectangular straight razors to aid in skinning quickly. They are cheap and they are lightweight to carry. Once the deer is skinned out, cut the meat off the bone (just follow as close as you can along the bone) and put the meat pieces/chunks inside the pillowcases. Tie the pillow cases shut and pack out them with your hide and horns also strapped on your pack.

Once you get back to camp get it on ice, but when you do this, take the meat out of the pillow cases and put them in a plastic bag to prevent the meat from getting water damage. Plastic bags are OK if they are sealed and placed in a cooler with lots of ice, otherwise never use plastic bags because they do not breath and your meat will spoil fast, especially on a packout.

The other reason I like de-boning the meat is because there is a problem that can sometimes happen with leaving meat on the bone. Many hunters don't know about it, (but butchers do) and it is a term called bone souring. That is when the meat spoils from the bone (from the inside out). This happens since the deep parts of the meat and bone take a long time to cool. Most hunters don't know their meat is bone sour, until the butcher cuts it off the bone....and it stinks like rotting flesh. One butcher that I know, had to clear out his entire shop because of some guy's elk had soured, and he didn't know until he cut into it. The hunter had thought he done the right thing by skinning and gutting it right away on an early season October hunt---he even hung the quarters in a cool place, but the meat did not cool to the core and it got bone souring.

Sorry for writing a book...but hopefully that helps you out.

[.270]

gut it, skin it, cut it up the best you can and pack it out. the goal is to get it cooled down. not neccessarily cold. cold is good, but from the scenario, ain't practical. get the body heat out of it. i've killed bucks in some pretty hot weather and never lost even a part of one. just take the best care you can until you can get it on ice. not in ice, on ice. don't let the meat get waterlogged. main thing is to be serious about taking care of it. you'll be ok. i think that most folks that say they don't like deer and elk because it's "gamey" are actually tryin' to eat something they let spoil. Lark.

[JLW]

thanks for the replies!

james

[Coues 'n' Sheep]

Good Stuff... Also worth mentioning is as you are boning out meat try to find cool shaded (clean) rocks to lay your boned meat on.... open the meat up flat as possible to alow as much heat out as possible. The best place to butcher a deer is in the very bottom of a shaded canyon (if available)... always about 10+ degrees cooler there... that all will hep stretch your window.... I'll even flip the meat on the rocks if they are really cool in the early morning... seems to work.

[slopoke36]

Last year my dad and uncle each shot a bull elk on Mt. Taylor, NM in the early part of OCT. They waited to skin and quarter the first bull and lost about 30 percent of the meat! They were mad at each other because they know better and thought they could get by till morning. The problem was it didn’t cool off enough that night and well the rest is history. The second bull they skinned and quarter on the spot and got everything. My advice is to skin and quarter as fast as possible. You have to cool the meat right away. I know I learned something from them and what not to do.

[Coues79]

You can freeze a few 16 oz water bottles and wrap them up in socks or some sort of insulation, a few inches thick. The insulation will help to keep them frozen longer. When you get your meat deboned and ready to pack into whatever it is (I like the pillowcases as well) put the water bottles in with the meat. It will help to start the cooling process.

[TLH]

I think the most important thing is to get the meat off of the bone--if an animal is going to spoil it is going to be closest to the bone and if you bone it that will let a lot of the heat out of the meat. Second--if you can hang it over night in pieces it will cool down very well even in Oct. i have noticed that the temps will start dropping into the high 50's or low 60's and that the meat will cool very nicely--the trick is to get it loaded and start your trek well before the sun comes up. If you stack the meat in your pack and head back to your truck and it takes 3 hours you will lose some of the meat you have--best way we have packed it out is to wrap it in those ultimate game bags and separate the meat and strap it to your pack away from each other--this keeps the wind circulating on the meat as you walk and will contain some of the coolness.

[cpugsie]

Some good advice so far. If you're going to hang your cheese cloth type game bags anywhere outside of your pack you should pepper it down. Blow flies can get right through the holes in cheese cloth bags. Pepper will help keep blow flies off the meet and from laying eggs on your meet. This happens really fast in the heat.

[Payson Outfitter...]

All great information.


I also use this to help when it is hot and I do not think I will be able to get it on ice or cooled down as quick as I want.

http://www.trophybagkooler.com/gamefreshspray.html

you might want to read this to understand why.

http://www.trophybagkooler.com/silentsecret.html

[azslim]

I have been using frozen water bottles for about 10 years, works great! I also use pillow cases as game bags, send the wife to yard sales and she gets them for about 25 cents, then after you use them you can either wash them up or pitch em and send the wife to yard sales again. I use 6 for elk and 4 for deer, I pack a boning knife and take them apart right where they fall.

[Sam]

Agreed - get the meat off the bone, keep it clean and out of water (melted ice) use frozen milk jugs, and keep the flies off. Shade and creek beds make a big difference. After a deer or elk has been cooled through, it can be wrapped with a blanket during the day to keep it insulated and keep the cold from escaping the meat. Then unwrap it at night so it can cool even more. In October down south, this will not work. But up north in late October and November, I have done this a number of times. This seems to always age the meat just right, so after 2 or 3 days it is ready to start butchering.

Three hours in a pack in 80 or 90 degree weather will spoil the meat. Most packs don't breathe much. Use pillow cases strapped to the outside of the pack or use just a framed pack. Let the meat breathe......