Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Wet Aging Meat

Bacteria can't fly, walk, or levitate.

But it can float, some " swim" , and it can propagate if in a moist enough environment.

Think about it.

I 10X over prefer to dry age because bacteria loves wet environments, but if that isn't feasible I will go ahead and cut the critter up like normal and vacuum seal it in bags, then age it. It will age just fine in the fridge before or after freezing. You could even do this and transport it home in coolers, keeping ice on it, which I guess would be considered wet aging. There's lots of ways to do what you're wanting.

Here's part of the whitetail I shot last week, aging in my fridge. This is no different than traveling home with the vacuum bags in a cooler with ice. I'll keep it in there like this for another week or so. You may not be able to see the blood in the vacuum bags, but if you can you can see how cutting it up before aging also bleeds the meat fairly well. I'll freeze it this way and pat it dry before cooking or you can open the bags, drain the blood and reseal before freezing.





I try to avoid total deboning before processing if possible so I don't have to trim so much red crust, but that's a topic for a different time.

Tejano: If you use dry ice do not put it directly on the meat or it freezer burns.

Hello Mike.....

The way I do it is to put a layer of ice on the bottom of the cooler, chunk the meat in and put ice on top. I don't wrap the meat or anything, don't put salt or anything else in the ice either. Drain the water out each day and refill with ice. I don't try to crowd the meat ie attempt to stuff an entire quartered whitetail in a 48 quart cooler. I put the hindquarters in one cooler and the rest of the deer in another just so I have a lot of ice. I find two little coolers (54 quart) a little easier to work with than one big one but YMMV on that.

You are going to get some water on the meat, especially at first as the first round of ice has to dissipate body heat, but there is no way in heck that bacteria is going to be an issue as long as you have plenty of ice in the box. That water is going to be just above freezing temp, and unless you get water from a creek somewhere to make your ice its gonna be coming from a purified source. The only way you can screw this up is to forget about it, let all the ice melt and the water get warm. After about a week give or take, the meat will appear pale, looking kind of like chicken, and that worries some people, but that is only superficial. I use plain old igloo coolers, not the high dollar stuff.

I don't know how much "bleeding" takes place in this process. You cut a heck of a lot of little blood vessels when you butcher an animal and these are going to bleed into the water. It does not take much blood to make the drain water look red. Usually after a day or two the water gets pretty clear.

I'm usually tired of acquiring ice, draining the cooler, etc after about a week and get motivated to put the deer away in the freezer. So I have not left the meat on ice much longer than that.

I've never had any problems or complaints about meat quality. I have had a chance to eat some venison that was aged in a walk in cooler with the hide on, ie the ideal way, and I could not tell any difference personally. I've also "dry aged" it in a fridge and can't tell the difference. It is my opinion that most average deer people kill are relatively young and don't benefit that much from a long aging process........but this stuff is almost like a religion.