Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting Game Bags: What do you use?

I appreciate the comments, but my desire was for lightweight game bags. Where I hunt EVERY ounce counts. I like the idea of the Kifaru bag as it is VERY light. I also am intrigued by the use of ultra light dry bags. Of course there is a trade off, but with the proper caution I think its a great idea.

it all depends on temp and location. usually in the hi country you can find a deep shaded cool spot to hang in. if you are on the sunny side of the mountain, well you might have to work hard to save meat. it will hang longer than most folks think it should and be ok. just get it into pieces to cool fast. go gutless and you can have it in pieces in a half an hour- well i never put a clock on it. i leave the hide on the legs till i get them hung- they stay cleaner that way. flies might be the worst problem to deal with. i have had meat hang for a long time while i made a trip out in hot weather and never lost an ounce of meat. some luck involved too. the tag bags are no better than anything else i guess but you can get 6 bags in a bag the size of a soft ball and it only weighs a few ounces. meat will take a lot of abuse and still be edible. once my bud shot an elk on a cliff overlooking camp. since it was a half mile around to haul it down we elected to throw it into camp. we ate every onuce. even with bags you might try to have a sheet to drape around the meat to help keep flies off. i have carried pepper and citric acid but never had to use it.

hekin237, if your looking for lightweight bags then you should look more into the TAG bags, that's one of the reasons why I use them.

When I am in camp with meat hanging I like to remove the bag and let it get some real air, keep it in the shade if at all possible, and wash my bags. Some folks I know will spray the bags with a solution of water and citric acid but I have yet to try that method.

The most important part of meat care IMO is keeping your meat cool and clean, I even carry a meat thermometer to check the core temp, that way I can keep it close to 40 degree's which is just about optimum to keep meat from spoiling.

I'll add dry.

dry?? i know i have always read to keep it dry - but on a 10 day float when it rained 8 days i never had problems. so ooo does it follow that dry is always necessary?? if it were to get hot enough would you put meat in cold water to save it?? who has done this? i would sure try to do that before i watched it spoil. are trash bags necessary??? really necessary.

If it gets into the 60's, I would consider putting the meat into the water during the hottest part of the day. Use the heavy duty "contractor" bags, they won'd leak like a regular trash bag. Experiment in the tub at home to find what works for you.

I would leave the meat on the quarters and refrain from boning it out till the night before you pack it out. The meat will be easier to keep dry and clean if you leave it on the bone. If it's not a long pack out, just leave it on the bone. If you have a long walk, bone it out the night before packing.

I don't think dry is *always* necessary. Neither is cool and clean, really. It just decreases work and increases time until final processing.

We keep meat very clean, as cool as possible, and as dry as possible. But, I don't gamble either!

Out of the 3 stated, dry, cool and clean, the one that should be paid the most attention too is keeping it cool. Allowing meat to stay above 45 degree's promotes the growth of bacteria and we all know what that causes. Larry Bartlett did a study on meat care a few years ago and that's what prompted him to create the TAG bags but even he admits that his bags are not perfect. Here's a link to his study and what he found.
http://www.pristineventures.com/big-game-bags.html

i have had elk hanging in 70 or 80 degrees and had no trouble if it had a night to cool. sometimes it had to hang in that heat all day before we got back to it. and then it had to ride all day on the horse to get to the truck. worried, you bet. but we always got it out ok.

I haven't looked for awhile because the ones I have are going on almost ten years, but I bought six heavy cotton, really canvas bags from Cabelas. The nearest experience I've had to your query was an Idaho hunt where I killed a bull the first day during quite a warm spell.

To keep hunting, we quartered him and hung him in the shade with one of these bags over each quarter but as the days went on the temp in the sun was reading the 70's and stayed there throughout; I guess it was in the 50's in the shade but luckily it cooled to just above freezing each night. On the third day I boned all the meat out with a swarm of yellow jackets keeping me busy extra busy. These do weigh about 16 oz each but you can put a boned elk in two bags and they will keep what ever you put the bagged meat in to carry clean.

I laid the bags of meat on pine bough beds near my tent and didn't get them into Elk City a 40 mi drive until day five and it was as sweet as any meat we've had.

I would strongly recommend very heavy cotton/canvas that breathes and that you can wash and use repeatedly. Stay away from non-breathing material or these very thin, cheap, mesh type bags that have no substance to them and do not protect the meat.

Old pillow cases have worked for me...Cheap, light, tough, easy to wash, breathable. Never had a problem yet with fitting an elk into them.