Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting cooler size format

dry ice is readily available where i have hunted and i dont have to stock up on gasoline or worry about it being stolen.

i carry several pieces of foam insulation with me and build a cooler when i need it. put some [20 lbs] dry ice in with the meat and it is frozen after 20 hours.

whatever you choose i hope you fill it. good luck

MANY grocery stores carry dry ice. If you're traveling, use the web to locate some stores near where you'll be hunting. A quick call will set you straight.
Put it in a small bucket and bury it in the middle of the meat. It will freeze anything it touches so the bucket will help isolate it. Also - if your cooler is tight enough, the CO2 will kill any bugs that happened to catch a ride.

Don't put it with your beer except in very small amounts...unless you like frozen beercycles.

Obviously everyone's way works well. This makes the most since for "me".

I used a 150qt cooler in Oct 2011 to bring mine home to PA from NM. Packed the meat with fresh snow and covered the cooler with a sleeping bag to help insulate from heat. Only needed to add 1 bag of ice on the straight through trip home. 33 hours and meat was very cold when I got to the butcher shop.

I've shot elk in mid-October in so. Idaho in deep snow and in 80F temps. You have to be ready for about anything.

About 12 or 13 years ago, we drew moose tags just outside of Yellowstone. On opening weekend, it was 90F. We hunted 1 day and came home. There was no way we could have saved the meat if we'd got one. The next weekend we went back and I shot a moose in 10" of snow.

I built a homemade like those mentioned above. It works well but is a little big unless several folks are going.

2 additional recommendations. Freeze � gallon juice plastic juice containers. They last a long time and arrange better in a cooler than big 1 gallon jugs. Get an electric freezer monitor or thermometer with a cord to place in the cooler. This way you can monitor the temp w/o have to open the lid.

Frozen water bottles served me well for years. Also wadded up newspaper in the dead space in the cooler. You want to chill the meat, not the air.

I have run with multiples of 100qt Coleman extreme coolers. I have 4 of them and take 1 whitetail hunting 2 elk hunting and 3-4 for moose. I have been using wet ice, partially because its easy and because sometimes I am using a SUV and dry ice in the passenger compartment on a long drive is not a good idea. Dry ice in a PU or on a trailer is fine of course.

For moose we had the moose butchered at the outfitters and drove up to pick it up the next week. The butcher froze it in the coolers and it stayed frozen for the 10 hours back home no problem. It probably would have stayed frozen if the drive was all the way from CO.
I think I payed around 50 per cooler and I have gotten a lot of use out of them and loaned them out to friends several times as well.

Its about a 2 day drive back from CO to NY and as long the meat was chilled going into the coolers its fine. Otherwise after the meat is chilled you will likely need to top off the ice.

With a homemade job, you can make the lid to reduce dead air space. Just make a lid that will drop down inside the sides and sit right on the meat. Use foam rubber to cram in the gaps.

This is an interesting idea. I had been considering something similar but instead making an insulated, internal divider that could be slid left or right to make a smaller space and the vacant space on the other side could be filled with gear or ice.

We use the 150qt coolers, one will hold a quartered elk (bone in) with additional meat and plenty of ice. I believe you might be able to get 3 quartered elk into 2 of them... It would be close.

I've been using a small chest freezer for many years. Works great!