Have a couple trips planned this year for elk. Question is how big of coolers does it take to bring elk meat home. Plan on boning it out if we get 1. Will take 24-26 hours road time to get home so need room for ice also. Maybe a better question would be how many pounds of meat are on a average size bull elk? Have boned out plenty of deer and know how much room that takes and know that poundage. Will just do the math.

Two 100 qt will do you

Two 100 quarters works for me too. Plenty of room for dry ice. Last years young bull yielded 220 lbs. of boned meat.

I got ~220-240lbs of meat (one average 6x6 bull) into a 150 qt cooler with plenty of room for ice.

Have any of you considered making a custom cooler? I am thinking about making one for just this purpose, sized to fit my truck and perhaps be collapsible. Using 2" or thicker extruded polystyrene foam board and some 1/4" ply, I think I could make a better cooler than I can buy, but I would love to see if others have done it first.

Built one for a moose trip up in BC. Worked fine. Sold truck and does not fit bed in new truck. I went back to using two 150 qt coolers. Use a combo of dry ice and reg ice. Wrap up mine in space blanket sleeping bags for long trips.

Average around 220 lbs boned out meat for mature bull.

see if I can find pics.

I did it once for an elk hunt to NM. To much trouble and the big coolers can be used for other things besides hunting season

Do a search for posts by UtahLefty as he's done it and posted the pics. His is sized large enough to use 5gal jugs as block ice. Pretty slick set up.

Do you have a small generator? For the price of 2 100 qt coolers, you can buy a 7 cu ft chest freezer. That's slightly more than 200 qt. Monitor it so it doesn't freeze. You can run it at night & with some duct tape around the seals, it'll hold the cold great while driving...or vise versa. Just for an example, this one is the same size as 2 stacked coolers. CHEST FREEZER

I've heard of guys moteling it on the return trip. They take a long extension cord and run it out of their motel room to the truck at night.

Or...find out the wattage the freezer requires & look for power inverters for your truck that will handle the load. You can run it off the alternator as you drive.

have thought about a small freezer because I do have a generator. Moved and just don't have enough room to store the freezer. can buy 2 100 qt coolers for 52 bucks each. Also can put them up in the rafters of a shed when not in use. Already have 2 7 cubic ft freezers and don't need another one but that really is a good idea

Yep, We used 1/2 inch plywood lined with 2 inch insulating foam board..

Make 6 pieces, 4 sides, top and a bottom.

Fasten all 6 pieces together with any standard door hinges, you'll need hinges for the lid anyway,

And with a cordless drill and screws, you can remove/add half the screws in a minute, the hinges will always (when not in use) remain on one piece of wood,

When not in use the whole cooler collapses down flat and is stored in the garage rafters.

Ours is 4'x4'x 30"

Ken, you are really close to what I was thinking. I would probabl go longer, narrower and just tall enough to fit under my bed's cover (24"?). I wasn't thinking of using hinges though. Just screw it together and use a bit of 3/4" 1x2 around the edges to screw to.

Did you seal between the bottom and sides with tape or anything? Did you provide for a drain?

Your idea and mine are very very similar, including storage. Knock it flat and store in the garage rafters - exactly.

No drain, Where is it gonna drain to? Your truck bed? The butt joints in the insulation are not sealed mechanically, just the foam butted up against each other rather tightly, the foam compresses nicely and seals up well.

The hinges are damn handy, at least consider it...

I"m thinking of cutting some groove in the bottom foam to channel melted ice to a bulkhead fitting and then some plastic hose under the tailgate and out of the truck.

I will definitely consider the hinges. I have at least 40-50 of them lying around from some salvage doors. That is the sort of idea that I was looking for. Hadn't even thought about them before.

Melted ice?

Bud, join the 21st Century, We've got this new thing called,,,,,,,,

Dry Ice. It's wonderful.

Yes, sir! My sentiments precisely. Dry ice on top of the meat separated by some cardboard. It will make it 48 hrs with a decent cooler and no peaking.

Colorado to Wisco no problem.

Yeah, well I'm not familiar with the availability of dry ice in Exactly Nowhere Wyoming but I have heard of the stuff. Does it work okay for beer when going the other direction?

I'm a 19th century hunter I guess. Don't use much of this 21st century stuff (except that F150 sure is nice :))

Another vote for two 100 quart coolers. It's worked fine on a few 30 hour drives from Colorado to Virginia. Buy a couple blue sleeping pads from walmart and cut a piece to fit the top snugly, close the lid tightly, and duct tape the heck out of it. We have done both the dry ice and regular ice. Either works. Regular ice is cheaper and easier to top off.

We built a cooler out of 3" thick foam filled garage door panels. Made it to fit on the front of our 20 foot trailer. Its bigger than a freezer. Put heavy duty handles and hinges on it. Refridge door seals on the lid. Put a drain in the bottom. We have had four quartered elk in it and still had room for more. Throw in 5 pounds of dry ice and by the time we are back to missouri most of the meat is frozen. Ill try and find some pics one of these days.

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!