How to tke care of downed meat? Dry ice, hang in cooler or take home

[gobbler1662]

I have a upcoming Archery Elk Hunt here in Oregon. I will be gone a total of 21 days in the back country, and leaving tomorrow morning.I will be approximately 220 miles from home so trying to look at all the options for when we get a animal down. We will bone out the meat and all of us will have large 5 day coolers with ice in them at the trail head, we have a town that sells dry ice about 45 minutes away. We all have multiple tags, Deer, Elk, Bear. So whatever we arrow we want to get the game out and return ASAP for more hunting. If i run the meat home probably looking at 60 or so for gas round trip. If i hang the meat its 35.00 first 3 days then 5 bucks a day thereafter. I am looking at the Dry Ice option. For those of you that have used this to keep meat cold how well does it work and how long will it keep meat cold or froozen in hot weather. The ice chest would be inside my truck probably covered with a shiping blanquet.

 

[realunlucky]

What would you do with the meat if you ran it home? Process it or drop it off somewhere and have them do it? I would think you would be hard pressed to leave it in a cooler for more than 5 or 6 days regardless of ice or dry ice without checking on it

 

[gobbler1662]

my thoughts are if i ran it home i would probably take an extra day to process it. if i did the dry ice option yes i wouldnt think one should leave it more than 3 or 4 days without checking on it

 

[cmeier117]

If the guy who got something ran the meat home that could work. Or go take it into town and hang it for a few days. Then maybe someone else in the group gets an animal or two and you can take all that home then come back. But I would pay to hang it and wait to see if you get more than one animal.

 

[Mike7]

Another possible option to help save you driving time is to wrap the boned out meat at the trailhead and freeze it with the dry ice that has been placed in a chest freezer or good ice chest. Also, when someone runs into town each week to get more dry ice, then they could transfer meat as needed into a plugged-in freezer...if the meat hanging guy doesn't have an empty one for rent, then ask if you can pay him to plug in your own?

 

[Tag stew]

Do you usually process ur own or have a butcher do it? If you have a butcher do it anyways, you might as well store it in the coolers on ice for a couple days and wait to see if you guy's harvest anything else in that time. Then after a couple days just take any meat to the butcher to get processed. That way after your hunt that's one less thing to worry about all your meat will be cut,wrapped and frozen. A little extra time and $$ maybe, but better than spoilage?