Temp for leaving elk carcass overnight

[nphunter]

Lots of people leave meat overnight. Lots of people complain about gamey meat, I feel like a lot of these are the same people. I have never and would never leave one over night, many times we’ve killed animals at last light and spent a good portion of the night packing meat. IMO it’s much nicer to break down and pack an animal in the dark anyway.

 

[2-Stix]

Lots of people leave meat overnight. Lots of people complain about gamey meat, I feel like a lot of these are the same people. I have never and would never leave one over night, many times we’ve killed animals at last light and spent a good portion of the night packing meat. IMO it’s much nicer to break down and pack an animal in the dark anyway.

In hindsite we should have had more urgency to get to the animal faster than 4-5 hours, pulled the entire hide and took the quarters off. I had to hike out to the rig and get more gear (puffs, food, etc) and my cousin, we gutted and skinned half the hide off and left it whole. It was probably about 25 degrees when I shot her and below zero when we got to her. I also should have hung her when I got home for a few days to thaw. Basically we didn't take care of the meat well enough this round. Lessons learned.

 

[LongWayAround]

Interesting to see the lengths guys will go to, without just finishing the task. By the time you half skinned, gutted, opened joints, whatever... you could have just finished quartering it.

Also... Seems fairly obvious that cutting a blood vessel on a dead animal won't result is appreciable bleeding. You know... The whole no blood pressure deal.

To answer the original question, I don't think there is an appropriate temperature to willfully leave an elk over night. They're too big and well insulated.

 

[2-Stix]

Interesting to see the lengths guys will go to, without just finishing the task. By the time you half skinned, gutted, opened joints, whatever... you could have just finished quartering it.

Also... Seems fairly obvious that cutting a blood vessel on a dead animal won't result is appreciable bleeding. You know... The whole no blood pressure deal.

To answer the original question, I don't think there is an appropriate temperature to willfully leave an elk over night. They're too big and well insulated.

I called my uncle...he said they have actually took 70-80 elk from that unit the last 40 years. They leave them overnight 90% of the time. He felt we did a poor job gutting it, didn't skin it all, got to it late and is was historically low temps and froze fast and I didn't hang it when I got home. She was bloated when we got to her. Him and his partner took 2 the day before and spent a few days packing them out of the same drainage about 5 miles south. He shot his early around 11am, clean gut and skin, and hung it in the woods. Not often do we get the quarters out that day. And he hung it a few days at home. His tasted good.

We felt we did enough. It was day 6 or 7 of the hunt, tired and I was out on 2 sets of tracks early that day. I did about 3k in elevation and 8 miles at that point and ended the day about at 5k and 12 miles at midnight. We were cooked. We did a poor job.

 

[nphunter]

In hindsite we should have had more urgency to get to the animal faster than 4-5 hours, pulled the entire hide and took the quarters off. I had to hike out to the rig and get more gear (puffs, food, etc) and my cousin, we gutted and skinned half the hide off and left it whole. It was probably about 25 degrees when I shot her and below zero when we got to her. I also should have hung her when I got home for a few days to thaw. Basically we didn't take care of the meat well enough this round. Lessons learned.

I was generalizing, I wasn’t responding to you, I don’t bleed out game in the field and it is never gamey. The only time it’s gamey is from tainted meat from touching dirty things or dirty hands. This goes for elk, mule deer, antelope and whitetail. IMO an elk is the easiest to turn gamey by not keeping clean hands, they are musky and dirty and have a lot of hair. A single stinky elk hair will ruin a whole package of steaks, if a piece of meat is questionable or has any kind of funk it goes to the dog.

Even when cutting we are constantly washing hands, tables and knifes. Just letting someone trim the meat and then start handling clean cuts of meat before washing their hands will ruin meat. I might sound anal about it but I don’t like poor tasting meat and I’ve seen some of the above ruin entire batches of meat before.

 

[butcherboy]

Interesting to see the lengths guys will go to, without just finishing the task. By the time you half skinned, gutted, opened joints, whatever... you could have just finished quartering it.

Also... Seems fairly obvious that cutting a blood vessel on a dead animal won't result is appreciable bleeding. You know... The whole no blood pressure deal.

To answer the original question, I don't think there is an appropriate temperature to willfully leave an elk over night. They're too big and well insulated.

Well, being a commercial butcher myself it doesn’t take me long to gut, skin, and open a few joints. Could I finish the task? Absolutely and do almost everytime. I have skinned some almost all the way, opened two joints, opened the shoulders, and left overnight in September with no problems. It gets fairly cool in the mountains overnight. I would never ever leave one gutted and not skinned. I do the necessary things to cool the animal off overnight and then I go to bed and get a good nights rest ready for the next day. For me, I don’t want to stumble around in the dark with a load on my back and being tired already. Just an accident waiting to happen and if I can take that out of the equation then I will.

 

[Marble]

For an entire elk, i would open it to the throat area and skin out a portion for the quarter, and possibly, go all the way to the bone. Depends on temps.

The most important thing is to get it off the ground. Lay it over a few thicks limbs, a rock, or something...air needs to flow under it.

But I can't recall the last time I didn't just quarter the animal. By myself, takes less than 2 hours with decent terrain.

With a breeze I would leave it overnight (quartered) in the lows 40s.

Sent from my SM-S918U using Tapatalk

 

[Larry Bartlett]

bone sour (autolysis) is triggered with internal meat temps of 60F and warmer. An animal (elk) left whole for 3-4 hours will taste gamey and one left whole for 6-8 hours will be green and sour. An elk at below freezing temps will hold its body heat for >12 hours and sour from autolysis sooner than you hope.

great thread guys, thanks to all.

 

[S-3 ranch]

You need to find yourself a new butcher -this guy is a hack.

Yeah that butcher is full of **** , it’s impossible to dry bleed out a mammal
At my family slaughter house, for example, a beef comes in, is zapped/ stunned, then jugular sliced to bleed out, it’s impossible for us to bleed out a deer or elk, nilgai that is already dead.
And you should see the terrible conditions hunters bring stuff in
Ungutted
Some full of fly larvae and rotten
Unskinned and ungutted
Soaking in water
Ect , it never stops being amusing the idiots that don’t even care or don’t know how to field care for their animals
We have to turn away lots of people with hot slimy meat that is soaked in cool water, no ice after a few day drive from out of state just cut up with a pool of water
Open those drains and stop regularly to top off with ice , drainage is important
When traveling, and keeping GM in a garbage bag really promotes bacteria
Quarter, cool , drain ! Will help you have quality meat and keep your meat from going to the dumpster

 

[trevvamos]

Other than extreme weather or grizzlies, what would prevent you from getting it quartered in the dark right away? Elk left whole can spoil well below freezing.

Bigfoot.

 

[butcherboy]

Yeah that butcher is full of **** , it’s impossible to dry bleed out a mammal
At my family slaughter house, for example, a beef comes in, is zapped/ stunned, then jugular sliced to bleed out, it’s impossible for us to bleed out a deer or elk, nilgai that is already dead.
And you should see the terrible conditions hunters bring stuff in
Ungutted
Some full of fly larvae and rotten
Unskinned and ungutted
Soaking in water
Ect , it never stops being amusing the idiots that don’t even care or don’t know how to field care for their animals

Yep, one of the big reasons why I quit processing WG after 30 years. We do way more domestic and I need the room for that. We will process 10 beef in 2 days and have to do around 40 elk to make the same amount of money.

 

[Poser]

Yep, one of the big reasons why I quit processing WG after 30 years. We do way more domestic and I need the room for that. We will process 10 beef in 2 days and have to do around 40 elk to make the same amount of money.

I worked in a butcher shop for awhile as well. We had a meeting once to discuss the idea of accepting game animals and, as the only hunter that worked there, I strongly advised against it for similar reasons: too much volume coming in at once on the weekends, too much questionable quality meat, too many complainers about yield and if we want to make more money then we need to land a few more porch chop and charcuterie contracts for restaurants. We don't need guys making $25 an hour cutting up deer for $150 gross.

 

[S-3 ranch]

Alright I'll bite on this thread, but there is a lot of nuance to much of this discussion. If I may start with the info that LoH has shared since it's so scientific. I just think it needs more input.

1. The most important separation of the discussion about wild meat cooling, rigor, and cold shortening VS that of domestic beef is very important for hunters to know. There are a lot of tricks to the commercial meat industry that are innovated for the sake of efficiency, quality, preservation and presentation of red meat. Those tricks do not translate well to hunters because our harvest environments are drastically different than a tightly controlled commercial slaughter plant. Not that we should forget what we read about the meat industry, but here are some things to consider based on my PhD level understanding of real time meat preservation and mitigation strategies.

2. Conditioning and delayed chilling. This refers to the pre-harvest "condition" of the animals' hormonal state (adrenaline mainly) up to the most critical 48 hours before slaughter. For example, stressed animals result in higher final pH levels in meat (over 6.0pH is tougher and dryer than pH 5.4-5.7) Fighting, cold weather, fasting and even transit stressors (conditions immediately before death) affect the quality of our game meat. Delayed chilling is a misnomer rabbit hole not to compare between wild meat preservation and commercial standards. I'll retouch on this down the read.

3. Deboning / physical restraint of muscles prior to rigor is a big deal for meat hunters and not so big a deal for wilderness backpack hunters who enjoy wild meat. Pragmatic scenarios sometimes demand that we hunters debone a hot carcass to get it out of the wilds timely and safely. The argument of science in this topic is not arguable. Meat left of the bone through rigor mortis results in less chance of shortening (permanent muscle contraction) regardless of storage temperature. I could argue that the final pH of the meat is more important to tenderness than whether the meat was on-the-bone or deboned immediately.

4. Electrical stimulation has less to do with "speeding rigor" and more to the point of accelerating the drop in the final pH of the meat. The commercial meat industry uses electrolysis to rapidly produce a pre-rigor pH of 5.4-5.8 while the meat is cooled rapidly to 40F where it hangs for up to 14 days in a controlled setting. This does not actually speed rigor mortis (glycolysis) but rather sets the best stage within meat fibers for rigor to process. It is said to shorten the process of glycolysis but it doesn't seem to speed up the window. That window is connected to storage temperature and conditions. The warmer the storage temp the faster glycolysis completes. But, a moot point to hunters since we ain't shockin nothin out and about.

Delayed cooling
Studies have suggested that Cold shortening levels of <25% (meaning some muscle contraction but likely is not noticeable in taste quality) can occur when meat core temps drop below 50F BEFORE the final pH still above pH 6.0. This is a vital takeaway for hunters. This means if you harvest an elk and the meat temperature reaches 50F within the first 24 hours, the meat is only at a higher risk of muscle contractions that could influence tenderness but is not decided or harmed by it through our taste buds. None of that shit matters much because our ideal goal for meat quality and preservation is to chill wild meat to 40F and keep it that cool until we transport it out of the field. Storage temps and humidity control the cooling rate of wild meat, which contributes to the water content in muscles prior to, during and after rigor. Which all connects the taste to quality vs tough and chewy.

The roof of this discussion is the final pH of the meat. Temperature be damned, if the animal's meat has a final pH value of >pH 6.0 (24 hours post harvest), that meat will likely be tough and chewy regardless of aging times and preservation techniques. So we should be equally concerned about the condition of the animal's health and stress load prior to death as we are about kill site temps and time left in the field.

Given a healthy animal and one that did not suffer for an hour during the stalk and kill scenario, the most ideal target for the final pH of meat quality is pH 5.4-5.8. The best way to ensure that your final pH falls within a tasty margin is first to shoot a non-stressed animal with a double lung shot to bleed out muscles well and then to promote cooling the meat from its resting core temp of 100F at time of death down to <50F by 30-36 hours post harvest. Meat should not be allowed to freeze prior to the end of rigor (60-72 hours post death). Once meat has stiffened and relaxed indicates the end of rigor. Meat will get firm to touch near 30F but will not produce freeze crystal until meat temps are <27F based on my research. The storage temp goal is 40F until after rigor, then freezing won't hurt a bit.

Glycolysis in wild meat starts at death and extends to 24 hours post harvest. Side note: when you strip the hide off a dead animal and you see muscle twitching and firing as if still alive...that's the observable process energy of sugars converting to lactic acid in the muscles.

Resources:

I could go on and on about meat science. Hope this helpful in some way to the OG post.

This is a amazing set of instructions for keeping your game meat edible
If you’re in a group, 1st guy to tag should become the meat tender and camp B
And forget about helping to pack or keep hunting even if they have a extra tag in their pocket or everyone should take their turn as camp B till final destination
Is reached

 

[Mtndawger]

I think one of the unspoken devil is in the details aspects of this thread is that damn near every situation is a little different. How fit are a you and how long have you been out that day? Do you have buddies to help or are you solo? How far back are you? Terrain considerations? Do you have food and water? Headlamps? What if it’s 8:30 pm and you are tired and hurrying because you have 2 hours to the car or camp and you slip and slash open your thigh? For the average hunter it’s likely true they have been tromping around the mountains for most or all of the day. The average guy likely isn't seeing many elk, so when he sees one he is going to shoot it. Lots of FNG’s and others who are new at this and learning. If it is @ sunset he may very well be cooked. So you have to ask if you want to kill one so badly that you are willing to be in a compromising situation should you even be shooting it if you aren’t prepared to take care of it properly. I don't judge a guy who wants to gut and skin and cool vs gutless and quarter or whatever. But’s it’s clear that having a plan of action before the kill and getting it opened up enough not to spoil is the prime objective. The meat science guys and the butchers have provided great insight for me regarding things I might do moving forward.

 

[Marshfly]

I think one of the unspoken devil is in the details aspects of this thread is that damn near every situation is a little different. How fit are a you and how long have you been out that day? Do you have buddies to help or are you solo? How far back are you? Terrain considerations? Do you have food and water? Headlamps? What if it’s 8:30 pm and you are tired and hurrying because you have 2 hours to the car or camp and you slip and slash open your thigh? For the average hunter it’s likely true they have been tromping around the mountains for most or all of the day. The average guy likely isn't seeing many elk, so when he sees one he is going to shoot it. Lots of FNG’s and others who are new at this and learning. If it is @ sunset he may very well be cooked. So you have to ask if you want to kill one so badly that you are willing to be in a compromising situation should you even be shooting it if you aren’t prepared to take care of it properly. I don't judge a guy who wants to gut and skin and cool vs gutless and quarter or whatever. But’s it’s clear that having a plan of action before the kill and getting it opened up enough not to spoil is the prime objective. The meat science guys and the butchers have provided great insight for me regarding things I might do moving forward.

This is a great point. I think a lot of brand new elk hunters totally underestimate how large and heavy the animal is and how much meat there will be to deal with.

I know I did until I walked up on my first bull on the ground.

 

[Jimbee]

I shot an elk in the evening, wasn't recovered until following morning. Archery. Highs in the 60s and low that night was probably mid 30s. Meat was fine. De boned and packed it out and had it on ice by the afternoon.

 

[Mtndawger]

I shot an elk in the evening, wasn't recovered until following morning. Archery. Highs in the 60s and low that night was probably mid 30s. Meat was fine. De boned and packed it out and had it on ice by the afternoon.

We refer to that as an outlier situation. Do you recommend that as a way to handle game for the OP?

 

[ScreamingPotato]

This is a great point. I think a lot of brand new elk hunters totally underestimate how large and heavy the animal is and how much meat there will be to deal with.

I know I did until I walked up on my first bull on the ground.

Every time I stand up with a fresh hindquarter strapped to my pack I'm 99% certain my knees aren't going to hold up. I gotta get about 100 baby steps in on flat before everything warms up and I have any confidence I can actually make the trip back to the truck. It literally surprises me every time and I get scared lol.

 

[Jimbee]

We refer to that as an outlier situation. Do you recommend that as a way to handle game for the OP?

Definitely wouldn't recommend it, just offering some information.

 

[Beendare]

It's a bit counter intuitive for the guys that haven't packed an animal at night.
I think they picture Grizzly's coming after them in the dark.

I agree with the guys saying, it's easier at night- cooler with less bugs. Plus you get the animal out before the bears and critters find it which usually takes a little while. Be prepared to process your critter- or don't shoot. My guess is that guys that "Couldn't find" a downed animal right at dark didn't try very hard.

There are way more bear incidents on guys going back to a downed animal in the morning and it has a bear on it- makes sense, they gave the bear all night to find it.

.