Taking a freezer to the woods

[Muddydogs]

Anyone haul a freezer to the woods with them? We are thinking about it this year as our season starts the end of the month and it can still be warm around these parts. My buddy and I are planning on staying out 2 weeks, we each have a cow elk and buck tag to fill.

For you that do haul a freezer, do you freeze the quarters or just get them almost frozen? Do you warp the meat, leave it in game bags or just throw the quarters in? Longest the meat would be in the freezer before being proccessed is 9 day.

 

[X-Rap]

Are you going to run a gen. for the whole time? I don't know how long it needs to run to maintain low enough temps. If you plan on putting bone in elk quarters you will run out of room quick.
Personally if it were me and I couldn't get to town and a meat cooler I would bring wrapping paper and package the meat in camp but I still think power to run the freezer will be an issue. Propane appliances of sufficient size are expensive but last forever, have you thought of that?
We have a couple refrigerators that can be pressed into service to store quarters in but with all the shelving removed it's hard to fit two hind quarters in one. I would always bag the meat from the time you quarter to cutting up and wrapping. We use plastic wrap and then freezer paper over that and it stays well without freezer burn if you press out all the air and voids.

 

[Muddydogs]

Plan on using a genny. Figure after the inital chill down I will probably be able to get away with starting the genny a couple times a day and running the freezer until it hits temp again. I will keep the freezer in the shade and put an old sleeping bag over it to help keep the sun off. I would put bone in quarters in until I needed more room then bone as needed. I cut my own meat so there is no issue there.

 

[brainwake]

Meat Wagon!

 

[Outlaw Man]

I've never considered that as an option. I'm not sure what the best process would be. Most meat is processed before it's frozen. Freezing can cause the moisture to separate (I'm forgetting the exact terminology), and slow freezing is worse. I'm afraid you might end up with a mess. Cooling to a very low temp may be a better option, but I don't know how long you could go.

The freezer should be fairly efficient once it's at temp. Freezers/fridges are great insulators....as long as the door stays closed.

 

[Muddydogs]

I'm not sure how long I could hold the meat at near freezing temps either. Another bonus of having a freezer is we can fill it full of extra ice for the coolers and keep some of our meat frozen that we plan on cooking the second week. This would cut down on the 40 mile trip to po dunk Utah for ice. This all could be for nothing if we get some freezing temps but this time of year its best to plan on at least 70's during the day and be prepared for colder. Last year I was getting ready to build an Ark so we could float home it rained so much. Maybe the best idea is take a bunch of freezer bags or even the food saver and if temp becomes an issue just cut and wrap the meat in camp and freeze it?

I'm also planning ahead as next year we are going to go over to WY and chance Antelope for a week or two, that season is going on right now so temps can still be in the 80's easy. If we have enough points to draw out we will probably have 4 to 6 tags between the 2 of us.

I have had a couple bad experiences with butcher shops and would prefer that my game meat just stay in my possession. That's what got me started cutting my own 20 years ago.

 

[Officers'Wife]

And I thought I heard it all when my brother started taking the tractor/loader to bring deer in from the woods... *sigh*

OK, go to the junkyard and get the bed & axles from a 3/4 pickup and convert it into a trailer. Build a topper for it out of FRP then find the cooling unit from a refrigerated semi trailer. (You may be able to find one used at a shop that specializes in semi trailer repair.) Put down wood pallets to lay your carcasses (carcai?) on then turn that sucker up as high (low?) as it will go. That way you can quick freeze the meat just like the butcher shops do.

 

[Andrew Leigh]

Rather than freeze initially I would refridgerate first, meat does better when it is aged for a while, the best is to dry age the second best is to wet age. 5 days in a Fridge will do wonders for its tenderness. Many domestic freezers here have a thermostat which allows them to operate as a fridge.

For the same problems you probably envisage we have taken to slaughtering on site which means that effectively we get rid of the large masses of bone which takes up so much space. We cut and package our cooking meat, cut strips for jerky and then all the offcuts are set aside to make sausage or ground meat. We grind the meat on site as well. All this goes into freezer bags (vacuum pack if you can) and then into the fridge for 5 days to wet mature. It then is placed in the freezer pretty much fully processed.

I had considered making a refridgerated trailer but we have never had a problem with meat. Remember unlike a steak which has already been hung at 5 deg C for about 2 weeks your venison is fresh.

It is generally not good practice to refreeze meat, it toughens it and causes other unwanted problems. If you can rather keep it at 3 - 5deg C and then freeze post processing.

The trick will be to field dress ASAP, hang to bleed it animal out and then get the temperature down real quick. One way is to quarter as you suggest. You can use what we call "mutton cloth" here to place the quarters into but remember that a fridge and freezer dries meat out so placing into mutton cloth and into a fridge will effectively allow you to dry age (the best) but this also result in meat loss as the outer crust becomes unusable. Do not be tempted to use large garbage bags due to the size of the joints. Many of the bags are treated with agents that are not good for us, they are after all for garbage. Only use food grade bags. Meat hates being in plastic although it is a necessary evil.

Lamb in mutton cloth.



From a recent hunt in South Africa.



Getting towards then end of one carcass hunted two weeks ago. Note the near half full Coleman. The meat had been hung for 3 days already at 5 deg C, we were butchering at about 25 dec C (about 80F) and the meat then was packed into freezer bags. Transported back home in Colemans (trip 7 hours at 25C). The meat then spent another 4 days in my fridge before I made the jerky and froze the other.

Hope this helps.

 

[wyohome]

Keep it 38F or below and it will be fine for a couple of weeks. I would move it around every couple of days and wipe out any drained liquid.

 

[Arkansas Paul]

I don't but we could. We have power and each camper has a pole with hook ups.
We just take ice chests though. The liqour store is 3 miles down the road so ice is readily available (amond other things).

 

[toiville2feathers]

We hunt Wyoming and used to bone our meat up and put it in ice chests and with dry ice to get it home. Not any more. One of the problems was proof of sex. How do you prove that it is a buck or a doe when its boned out. The game check points will only take the butcher shops word for Identification of the animal. Now with the CWD problem there has been a lot of rule changes that need to be looked into. No bones, spinal cord tissue or brains can be transported across some state lines. That poses another problem for trophy heads and capes being brought home.
Thats some of the problems we have experienced.

 

[rondog]

With my luck - I'd be willing to bet that if I schlepped a freezer and a generator to the field on a hunt, that I then wouldn't even see a pile of poop the whole trip. It would jinx me for sure!

 

[Andrew Leigh]

Over here most hunting is done on private land and the lodge owner issues permits for the sex of the animal. It is also difficult to get certain components across state line.

 

[22-rimfire]

Freezer... wow. Talk about taking the "kitchen" with you. I personally would try to haul the meat to a meat locker and store there if possible. The cheap furniture pads and a tarp might work real well as a insulated cover. You could also keep the temp above freezing but still cold if necessary for a few days.

 

[X-Rap]

I've been looking into propane freezers for taking to the lake or the mountains on meat runs. Being able to fill a freezer on the spot with fillets or packaged elk would be a nice addition to the camp equipment. Not to mention extending the stay with fresh frozen food brought along on the trip.