Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Flying with meat

Have you flown with meat? Wondering if you have any tips / tricks to get through the airport process. Looking at the possibility of transporting up to two Pronghorns, skulls and meat.

Yes, We ship meat every year with our hunters, use a cooler freeze it and the meat tape it closed and ship it with their luggage it's expensive as hell, costs a fortune for what you want to do check it out before you go. Rio7

I've flown home from Costa Rica with a cooler full of frozen yellowfin tuna. Just freeze it solid in zip locks and add NO ICE. Tape the cooler closed and checked it as luggage.

Taking meat back with you as extra baggage is the best way to get it home. I ship gear back ups sans rifles . Optics travel as carry on.

I've flown home with antelope, whitetails and mule deer meat in the overhead bins on numerous occasions. I freeze the boneless meat. Then I line my pack with one of those silver lined grocery store freezer bags. Fill the pack with meat (no ice!) and put it in the overhead as my carry on. If it doesn't all fit in the pack, I'll do the same with a smaller bag that will fit under the seat as my personal item. Meat is still frozen when I arrive home in Florida from Wyoming.. Two pronghorns should yield, roughly, about the same as a deer, so you should be good.

All great suggestions. Thank you for the replies!

Have flown meat from AK, no issues.

https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/items/fresh-meat-and-seafood

A few additional thoughts... consider first class return flight as some airlines allow 1 or 2 extra free bags and it might make it easy to justify.

Pack small boxes as full and tight as possible for freezing. Use the uniform frozen contents to make minimum size/maximum weight packages for your carry-on. Random shapes and sizes are a PITA to pack. Tightly packed frozen stuff stays solid for a long time.

Send bulky stuff home by the cheapest fare... UPS Ground where they have it... vacuum pack clothes if possible.

Great info. Thank you!

^^^This^^^
Brought back 40lbs of frozen Halibut fillets from AK to Florida. It made it home just fine.

Ole and Sven went moose hunting in Alaska. Had a guide drop them off. They both shot a very nice bull. When the guide came to pick them up, he told them that was too much weight. He couldn’t carry both of them and two large bulls.
Ole and Sven immediately strongly argued. Saying this was the lake where they shot big bulls last year and the guide had an identical place. Finally the guide gave in, loaded the meat, the antlers, Oke and Sven. They took off and 100 yards past the waters edge the plain crashed. Ole asked Sven, “ Vell how did we do?” Sven replied, “Dis is about the same place we crashed last year.”

Only once with meat. Lots of variables I’m sure. Drove to Missouri to hunt white tails with a friend and flew home. One checked bag a carry on and personal bag was the goal. Two frozen boned deer. Weight for the checked bag was the issue. Ticket agent stood there and advised me to move much more weight to the carry on to max it out. After a couple attempts making weight. Ended up with all the frozen meat as carry on and everything else in the checked bag.

I bone out the animal, put the meat into zip locks, then either freeze it if where I'm hunting has a freezer or pack it in either hard or soft ice chest with dry ice on top, the meat will freeze in couple of hours. Last year I flew home with three 50 lb ice chests full of meat, I checked in two ice chests and carried the other on board. Airlines will let you take meat as long as you don't have melting ice in the cooler, dry ice is fine up to 5lb per package. Depending on your flight duration but frozen meat will stay frozen up to 8 hours in good ice chest.