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.

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.