Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Dealing with meat in hot weather?

Filaman,

That's interior temperature, not surface temp.

OK but won't it cool all parts too quick if you just ice it down?

Depends on the size of the meat chunk! But some ice mixed with the water bath won't cool it nearly as quickly as putting the meat inside a pile of ice cubes.

Most meat-care research originates with commercial meat, due to economics, but it also usually applies to game meat. The University of Wyoming does a lot of research with game meat, and in fact their research is where I started learning a lot about what actually happens (rather than depending on hunter conjecture) around 40 years ago.

Some of the toughest big game meat I've ever eaten was from a forkhorn mule deer buck, killed cleanly with one shot on a cold November day. It should have been very tender, but my hunting partner and I hung the field-dressed buck up outdoors, with the hide on. That night the temperature dropped below zero, and the buck was totally frozen by morning, and even though I hung the carcass for a week afterward inside a garage, both to thaw and allow the meat to age some, the meat still turned out to be really chewy. That's probably still the most extreme example of cold-shortening I've ever seen, but today am still very leery of too-quick cooling.

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This is what I was talking about. But remember, I'm in Texas and other than the South Texas Brush Country, we really don't have big deer. If I dump forty pounds of ice on a deer in an igloo It's going to cool the whole thing down pretty quickly. According to what yall are telling me about cooling too fast I think the water bath with some ice is the best way to cool it down. Of course most of the time the deer has been dead and cooling with the body cavity open for 5 hours or so before any meat hits the ice. There s beer to be drunk first. First things first.

If you get water on meat it ruins it and you loose a layer.

So I skin, then wrap it with a huge roll of plastic wrap so it’s air tight, then drop the quarters or chunked meat into a cooler with ice, that bleeds off melted water.

Works like a charm !!

Old wives tale from at least the 60s or earlier.

I can’t remember, late 70s or early 80s, I’ve been covering deer meat IN water
and ice on top. Drain and repeat till water isn’t red. Keep meat ‘ cold ‘ NOT frozen.

I alone converted TWO deer camps from freezing venison
immediately TO water/ice cooling for days to 10days.

No one got sick and they preferred it that way.

Jerry

Interesting - I frequently brine venison overnight in ice water with some salt and other seasoning before grilling. It's always turned out great - consistently more tender and less dry than if I don't, and really helps with strong flavored mule deer shot during the rut.

Game bags, then hefty bags on ice in the cooler, have had to submerge in a river to keep moose cooled down. If you have ice, you got it licked.

I've never heard anything about water on meat ruining it. But I've been thinking about this all evening and just woke up to pee and thought some more about deer being tough when cooled too fast. Now I'm thinking some of the very best and tenderest White Tail meat I've had was when we killed it up around Junction and let it hang for a couple days before co10 dming home. Even though the ambient temperature up there was probably 10 degrees F cooler than here at home the meat still naturally cooled down. Where as the last 8 years I hunted was 17 miles from my front door and although it didn't hit the ice for at least 4 or 5 hours after it was killed, it seemed tougher and the flavor wasn't near as good as hill country venison. I always thought it was something they were eating out on the salt grass prairie here. But maybe it had something to do with hanging in cool, like 35-45 degree F temps for a couple or so days. We never iced it down for a couple days. Then when I'd get home I'd skin it and quarter it out and put it on the ice for a week before cutting up and wrapping and freezing it. That meat was golden. That makes me want to build me a walkin cooler.

Hill country deer eat a lot of acorns but so do coastal deer. There are a couple of acacias or sages that can affect the taste of South Tx. deer. But I think the hanging made the difference in tenderness.

Just finished (about an hour ago) butchering a 750 lb steer with oldest son and his father in law under a post oak tree. Packed it all in them big ice coolers in ice with the drains open like lots others have recommended. Will keep icing it down and draining. Just like we do elk and hogs. They butcher steers all the time like this.
This was an emergency butchering today, as the thing broke it’s back leg in the pen this morning.