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

Please excuse me if this is some what redundant but I will be shooting a Buffalo when even morning temperatures will be around 80 degrees. I know cooling too fast before rigors is not good but neither is spoiled meat. We will have about a 2 hour window before we can get the meat to a cooler. I was thinking of putting the quarters in an ice water bath until they can go to the locker. Should I do a slow cooling or just ice things down?

How about putting that cooler on a trailer and running it with a generator? What they do in a packing house is to skin, eviscerate the cattle then cut the carcass in half lengthwise, wash it, shroud it and hang it upside down in a cooler at temps in the mid 30’s. As close as you could simulate that would make for the best meat. There is a lot of steam coming off a fresh carcass in a walk in cooler and managing that much humidity in a small cooler with a big animal could be an issue.

When we go to Colorado for 2nd rifle, we take an enclosed trailer with a small to medium freezer and a genset. Frozen food and supplies go out. Hopefully elk meat comes back. Run the genset when we are not traveling.

Ice bath in coolers works fine IME. I like to keep the water drained off of it, and add more ice. Done it for years that way.

YEP ^^^^^^

I prefer ice chest & ice or a cooler ----> not frozen until the meat has time to age some.


Jerry

Leave the cooler plug cracked so water/blood can escape... stuffing a paper towel in works great. Keep loading up the ice on top for a couple of days. Makes for the BEST elk/deer ever. I used to hang mine in a walk in for years until I tried this way... ice chest is the bomb...

We have several big ice chests for the occasions when we kill something big in Montana during warm weather. Keep them just inside the garage door, with the drain open where the concrete floor slants downward underneath the door, with a brick under the other end. Have done moose quarters that way. (But we also have a full-size refrigerator out there, which is plenty for antelope quarters, and most deer quarters.)

Good advice, I have to use coolers on a regular basis and I think only once I got tough meat. That deer may have been tough regardless or it may have been from too fast of a cool down. I am going to wash down & soak with cool water for maybe 30 minutes then drain and ice down. Afterward it will dry age for about 12 days at around 35 degrees. I was warned that if aged two weeks the outer meat drys out and turns black and has to be cut off so I don't want to loose any meat. I will try a couple of additional days in the refrigerator to see if that does anything, maybe do a side by side comparison with no additional aging.

I have a storage room that is insulated and about 4x20" would a conventional AC unit be enough to turn this area into a temporary meat locker. I think it has about R15 walls and R30 ceiling insulation. The other option would be to put a refrigerator in there and leave it open but this seems like it could burn out the compressor.

How much ice chest space will I need for quarters? I have a 100, 92, 65, & 2 55s plus soft coolers. Will this handle it?

If you just open the door on the refrigerator it would actually add heat to your enclosed area. Same with the ac unit. You have to vent the heat outside.

Thanks, the window is blocked by another building, but I could vent a portable, but not sure if those are rated high enough.

Yep, in Texas that's just general SOP even in the fall. Most mornings in November start out around 30-50 Degrees but by noon or 1:00 PM its usually over 60. Hell, I've seen it 80 on Christmas and Thanksgiving many times.

I usually skin my animals and gut and clean up and quarter on the day I kill them. As I quarter them they go straight into a 150 Quart Igloo with about 40 Pounds of ice and stay there for up to 7 days, draining off the bloody water and adding ice as needed.

I never knew you could cool meat down too fast. I was always told the faster the better.

The too fast cooling is before rigors sets in and then relaxes which can take up to 24 hrs. But it is like the meat stiffens up and stays that way and not always will aging undo this. I heard of someone shooting a deer that expired in an icy creek and it turned out unbelievably tough, possibly due to the rapid cooling.

I have also been gunge ho to eat some tenderloins while processioning a deer and watched them curl up on the grill, they were tough and chewy.

I think the quarters will be so big they can't cool off too quickly. Once I get to the cool down phase I will add some salt which lowers the temperature, slightly brine's the meat, and draws some of the blood out.

Well then why did you ask ?


Jerry

To see if someone had a better way or was more knowledgeable than I. For example I have heard of people using dry ice for a fast cool down. But that may be too fast and can have other issues. I also wanted to see if others had negative experiences with icing down immediately, apparently not. I have shot many deer in warm weather but the larger animals were always either in cold weather or I had a team of skinners to take care of them.

The latest scientific info is to not cool meat to lower than about 60 degrees in the first 12 hours. That's enough to prevent souring due to bacteria, but not enough to cause cold-shortening.

I use big ice chest like 150qt size.I put about 6-8" of ice to start with in the bottom of the chest.As I quarter,I put each piece in a large plastic bag,not closing it,but just letting the excess wrap around the meat.Layer the meat on top the ice,then once covered,ice the meat down all the way to the top.Do the same with however many chest it takes to keep your meat iced down.Keep the ice chest propped up with drain open to keep the water drained off.Add ice everyday so meat always stays covered.It takes about a week before the meat relaxes,about ten days even better.If you gut shot the animal,you will probably better off putting any infected parts directly on the ice after washing it down well first.If you can let it hang in a cooler for a week or so even better.The main thing is keep it cold,but not frozen.Also,meat that your going to grind can be done before the week on ice to save on the amount of ice it takes to keep the meat cold.

Thanks MD did not know the 60 degree recommendation and the 12hr guideline. So I will focus on more of a water bath at first not an ice pack.

Baldhunter: Been doing pretty much the same thing except I only bag the back straps to prevent water logging. With bags if I run short of ice spoilage starts quicker than if the meat was just in the ice/water.

I don't think some ice in the water bath would hurt, especially with larger chunks like hindquarters.

Well thinking about Mule Deers post, I think I'll put the meat in water with some ice, checking the temp and adding enough ice to hold the temp at or slightly above 60 Degrees F. Then after 12 or so hours, draining the water off and covering with ice.

That's what I Love about this place. There's enough real expertise here that you actually learn something was on another forum that had two or three people that knew something and the rest had opinions. They ban one of the good guys and I'm here a lot now.

Go to Wally World and get you a couple of 150 Quart Igloos. Yeah Yeah Yeah, I know Yeti Yeti Yeti! But You aren't going out in a boat in the summer. Igloo will do fine for this and you can buy 5 or 6 for the price of one big Yeti.

My son has a charter boat out of South Padre and he has like 10 cubic foot Industrial grade coolers on board and stokes 'em up with about 150 pounds of ice. They hold the ice for several days worth of fishing. But I wouldn't want to pay for one, much less four. That's one of the reasons those charters cost about $1000. per trip.