Hi guys,

I'm going hog hunting in Texas again, however this time driving. I have lot of travel to do in addition to this hunt for my safari business. So we are doing a road trip with the 22' travel trailer as our base camp.

I have two Yeti ice chests to bring meat home in. However from the termination of the hunt, to the arrival home might be 6-7 days on the road. I've not used Dry ice to achieve this in the past.

Am I correct in assuming that I should load up the pre-frozen meat into the ice chests first, then lay the dry ice on top? I understand the science of the dry ice, and the cold air should in theory sink, so putting it on top should be better?

I'm guess two blocks on top of each chest should would for a few days? 3-4 days? then I replace it or add more every 3 days as I go? If you have experience with this and the success or failure using it, do share!

The Yeti's are 85 quart and will be transported in the pickup bed under the canopy. There will not be any food for the trip in the ice chest so once closed they will stay closed until I add more Dry ice. Fortunately the fridge and freezer in the camper are plenty big enough for the food we will use on the trip without the need of the ice chests.

JJ
We have done this many times. Dry ice works very well to keep meat frozen. Couple of points. Use more than you think you will need and do not open the chests once you close them up. Also do not keep them in your camper at night as the carbon dioxide and humans don't mix well. Put it on top and you will get at least 10 days of freezer time if it is not 100 plus degrees out each day.

Thats what Iv done when I used dry Ice, should last longer in the yeti! careful that stuff will burn you!

What they said.Just try and keep as much 02 from getting to the dry ice..

We've done that quite a lot in the past.

Yes, pre-freeze the meat. I also pre-freeze the ice-chests themselves, just to provide a totally frozen environment (probably not needed)

I've always put a frozen piece of heavy cardboard over the meat and placed the dry ice on top of the cardboard. My theory is that by doing so, the dry ice will not "cold burn" the frozen meat.

Use lots of dry ice and don't open the top until you get home. O2 is your enemy.

Keep for a full week ... absolutely not a problem, especially in the Yeti coolers.

Blessings,

Steve

That'll work. Duct tape them closed (maybe a vent for co2 to escape). Then put wet towels on over them, evaporative. Re wet at fuel stops. Also if you can put the coolers in the freezer with the meat while they are freezing that really helps.

Here's what we do when rafting on 16 day trips in the Grand Canyon layer of vacuum packed meat. Water to cover. Freeze until solid. New layer of meat. Water to cover. Freeze until solid.

Repeat.



Stay out of the cooler. Maybe once a day. Keep air out and use towels for evaporative effect.
Bottom layer frozen on day 16.

Put some dry ice on the top layer with some bubblepack between it and the food, probably never even have to replace the Dry Ice more than once.

be careful with ventilation , also check this :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete

thanks
Persian.

I bring vacuum sealed fish home from Washington in Igloo coolers with dry ice. It's a two day trip. The temperature in the coolers isn't uniform, but we've never had a problem. You shouldn't have a problem keeping the meat frozen so long as you check the coolers a couple of times per day and add dry ice as needed. I would definitely check them more often that every three days.

Why is that?

I think he means air. Air exchanges in the cooler will melt stuff faster than anything

Dry ice can evaporate in 12 hours or so, to slow this wrap in paper and then place in ice chest

That's because your using Igloo and not Yeti's. They keep things cold a lot longer.

A lot guys are going to small chest freezers and generators these days.

Size of the Yeti makes a huge difference... bigger is obviously much better. I would be surprised if the one application of dry ice in the biggest Yeti did not last a week.

I got a yeti sticker and a yeti hat

so people will think I have a yeti cooler and be part of the yeti nation

peer pressure/social acceptance sorta thing I geuss.......

Please, it doesn't matter wtf you have. You will never be socially acceptable.

That makes sense. I could not formulate a CO2-O2 reaction.


To pick nits, dry ice sublimes - no melting or evaporating; it goes from solid phase to gas phase completely bypassing the liquid phase (at atmospheric pressure)
Thus endeth the lesson.

I've seen two different groups handle sockeyes like that (with a vac packer as a middle step) about 25 years ago in Chitna.

many years ago i shot a hog in northern california, deboned it and hard frozen. Placed in a cooler with a lot of dry ice over the top. From n. california to central arizona, couple day trip.
Took it to a processing place, they told me it took a couple days to defrost it enought they could work with it.

go skirt up your trailer
keep the possums and stray cats out

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.

Salt, I forgot the salt in the water/ice mixture, as noted by someone else

and if you have a kill you want to keep and are not traveling then definitely you should find a freezer to put/hang it in

The dry ice will likely never evaporate. At least not in a cooler in a car.

Yep.. . But... As % CO2 goes up you could potentially displace the O2 in the air. CO2 doesnt harm you, but the lack of O2 sure can. Experience for many has proven that this wont be an issue in a cooler in a car, as it'll take a long while for the CO2 to completely sublimate and no car will be airtight for that long.

You see this with liquid nitrogen, traveling in a car or storing in a small area without a Dewar could be deadly, despite N2 being completely inert and technically as "harmless" as CO2.

Then there's the question of will the offgas even be enough to cause a problem, which is, as you said, no.


Sorry. Slow morning.

Ice.....salt (1 lb per big cooler)

Done......it really is this easy

I travel and soak out all meats this way.

you do understand the co2 starts to gas at -109 degrees?

I am trying to imagine the weight of dry ice it would take to travel 6 to 7 days at even 32 degrees

Could you describe your process a bit more please? Do you just put the raw meat in the cooler with salt water ice around it? Do you wrap the meat in anything?

Do you like your meat salty?

Raw....quarters
Several bags of ice to completely cover by 2 or 3"
Then take a round pour top box of salt and pour it over the ice

As the ice melts you get a ice salt water mix that is very cold and is anti bacterial

Salty meat?

Nope...not at all

Thanks guys

tedthorn, I do not understand the "antibacterial" function you describe?

Salt is not antibacterial nor is water. What is the antibacterial dynamic?

I have been doing taxidermy for 40 years now. I have used salt to cure raw skins but the hundreds. Salt is a moisture removing process. Without moisture bacteria does not grow. It's not at all antibacterial it's an extreme desiccant.

With the salt mixed with melting ice it does not remove any water, it's dissolved into the water. I'm not understanding the anti bacterial process. I can say with countless experiences that folks have brought me a cape or hide to tan and mount.

They seem to have believed that they needed to salt the skin in the field. Then when they arrive home they put it into the freezer to keep it preserved until they get it to the taxidermist.

In most cases, nearly all of these cases, the skin is spoiled even with the salting and freezing. This is due to the hide not freezing because it's salted, and not dry because the moisture that the salt pulls out of the hide pools up in the folds of the skin and then begins to spoil.

I was not clear on why this could happen early on. I never believed that sub freezing temperatures could allow decomposition. However it does allow decomposition below freezing especially in the dark.

I do not think it's reasonable to assume that adding salt to the ice creates an antibacterial condition. At least not by my knowledge and experience in the taxidermy trade using freezers and plenty of salt.

In my hunting camp in Africa we do not ever reuse salt because of the bacteria that is in it after the first use. I taught the trophy handling classes at the PH school and for the skinners in Ellisrass South Africa. I very assertively insisted that salt only be used one time, regardless if it looks clean, or if it seems dry. The old salt will introduce significant bacteria to the next hide it's used on.

Many times, like this past year, space is at a premium in our coolers. We brought back ~250# of frozen fish fillets, and there was only a bit of room on top for dry ice. Sometimes a few pieces get a bit soft around the edges, but we've never had anything spoil. Wet ice seems like it would be more of a hassle and probably result in more thawing. Probably not dangerous, but dry ice works just fine.

The Yeti's are heavier and much more expensive. I've installed hardware on my boat decks to allow strapping them down securely. The one on the cockpit deck doubles as a fighting bench. We fill them with flake ice when we get to the coast and it lasts pretty much the entire week. Changing to the high dollar coolers would be a pain.

Done that with beer once.

Got cold quick.


Then froze the beer

You need some CO2. Hyperventilation is a lack of it. That's why you breathe into a paper bag if you lose your breath when over excited. The CO2 concentrates in the bag and you get a higher dose breathing it back in.

Yep, somewhere down near .5-2% or something. Call it 1%?

Higher concentrations could lower o2 conc in air, which is counterproductive after a while.

Its all moot, he (OP) wont fit enough dry ice in a smll apace long enough for it to be a worry. Not like N2.

Well not only that, but as I wrote in my original post, the two cool boxes will be in the bed of the pickup under the canopy. Nobody will be in the bed of the truck just some hunting gear and such.

Could a well-sealed or duct-taped cooler result in excessive pressure built up as the dry ice sublimes?

I'd expect the duct tape seal to fail before an explosion.

Maybe there's a video of that on youtube.

Lots of over thinking in this thread.
Yeti coolers are awesome. Put the frozen meat in, pack with wet or dry ice if you have room and don't open them until you get home. Meat will last that long in a fridge so why not a good cooler packed with ice? Most of it will still be frozen, some may be thawed but it will all be good.

Good luck on the hunt.

Well by all means please do cary on

I will do so myself....ice, salt and water

Regards
Ted

incident corrected to reflect actual events that took place

Before we go on a long trip ..we frezze both the cooler and what's in it ...and we tape the lid...its a block of frozen stuff for a week easy...no ice either

Are you hauling it at -30*?

For the price of a few Yeti coolers why not buy a used semi and refrigerated van trailer??
Lol

Frozen meat in the yeti will keep for the trip home. If you add dry ice on top and fill air gaps with news paper or cloth, it will certainly stay frozen for a week. Use enough dry ice to cover the top. Duct tape the lid and don't open until you get home.