Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Using Dry Ice in an ice chest to keep meat frozen for a week

With prefrozen meat, you won't have any trouble for 7 days with dry ice. Keep the coolers in the shade all the time, and don't open them to be looking around.

Carbon dioxide will not harm you. You produce plenty with each breath.

Now Carbon Monoxide irreversibly binds to the hemoglobin in your bloood with dire results.

Fear not dry ice, but wear gloves!

says the man that had 1 of the 12 dogs in his trailer piss in a outlet and almost burn the Fleetwood down.

This. Dry ice cannot be bought everywhere, where gasoline can be. Plus, its always good to have a generator anyways.

Thanks folks, exactly what I wanted to hear.

I'm well prepared now to make this work!

Ice cream shops receive their shipments in dry ice and might offer you a better deal than some other vendors.

Did this the year I killed an elk in Colorado; I just headed straight to elk camp in Oregon with the meat. Bought dry ice at Wal-Marts along the way. At camp, I put the coolers (not as good as a Yeti FWIW) on the shady side of the tent and covered them in a tarp and straw. When I finally got home it was JUST starting to get the tiniest bit thawed.

It's sublimation.

But as Ironbender pointed out the process by which dry ice goes away is sublimation... that is not a CO2-O2 reaction. It is just dry ice changing states.

We haul frozen food to the cabin packed with dry ice.

I am in and out of the cooler throughout the week and things stay frozen for 4-5 days. Figure if I stayed out and kept it full of frozen foods, it would probably stay completey frozen for the week. You'll be fine.

I've always used regular ice and salt for long meat hauls

On trips where we expect a long stay or lots of road time and a lot of meat, we always take a chest freezer.

I can't imagine not having a small chest freezer in the travel trailer.

This isn't true. CO2 can displace O2 and cause asphyxiation. I don't about the relative concentrations in this situation but I wouldn't sleep with the cooler in a closed up camper

I don't know why people come in here for this kind of advice. a couple of points but almost universally show no understanding of physics or chemistry

The main difference is that dry ice gases off as it melts instead of becoming a liquid. Why is this important? It means it is going to pop open your lids and the value of the Yeti's is they hold the cold in, not so much with the lids constantly venting. Seal them? They will explode. and it will evaporate (not melt) fast. The Yetis aren't designed to keep that kind of cold the heat transfer will be much faster and ice is harder to melt calorically, which is extremely important.

CO2 will have no reaction with O2 or N2 of atmosphere or the meat, the only effects will be from the exchange of temperature, but as noted, it is heavier than air and if you get caught in a pocket of it, you will not get any O2 and passout and if you do not get to real air with o2 you will die. It doesn't poison you but it will displace the o2

to transport meat. Freeze it as cold as you can before the trip (using dry ice here would be good). Seal it up against water. pour water ice over it. Replace the ice as it melts (you can buy the bags anywhere). keep the coolers closed otherwise. Keep them out of direct sunlight no matter what the temperature (cover them with something that is white or reflective as possible (like those space blankets that look like thick aluminum foil) Pour off water as needed but the mixture will be better for cooling if you don't get rid of all the water (keep it to the level it covers the contents). MAKE SURE the meat is sealed against the moisture. Put in freezer as soon as you can (which I assume you would do anyway)

The aid of cooling it with electronics is a much better idea

or finding a place on the way to leave it in overnight to refreeze it (bet you can find resturants with walk in freezers that you could leave it in, cheaper than buying dry ice

If you have a large empty space on top, put in something to fill it. A blanket should work. It'll hold the cold air down on the meat better.

Have had great luck with dry ice and my "redneck yetti wanna be cooler" . Bought the insulation wrap they put over AC ducts, silver foil layered over bubble wrap and a roll of aluminum tape from Lowes. Made a cover that fits over the cooler like a hat. Cost me about $40 and covered 3 good size coolers. Works like a charm on my $100 Igloo.

I meant the meat would melt. I know that solid C02 sublimates to gaseous form at our atmospheric pressures. Thus the vent in the duct tape I mentioned above.

You guys are so smart...

I'm not much of a hog hunter but I have heard from various people that packing wild pork with regular ice and letting it bleed out for up to a week improves the flavor. You just drain off the bloody melt water everyday and add fresh ice as needed. I have done this with a bunch of deer and the only hog that I ever killed and they all were good.

Point being, if you are only going to be gone a week, you don't have to fool with the dry ice. Regular ice is everywhere....I expect dry ice might be hard to find. Regular ice will certainly keep meat for a week and depending on who you ask might improve it.

Except Crystal City, TX, early on a Sunday morning.