Care of meat in warm temps?

[Little Wattsy]

Thank you everyone for your replies. I think I will try hunting this September in eastern Washington. One thing I'm not too sure about though is how to keep the flies off while I am skinning, and I am slow at skinning! Is there a way to kill the fly eggs in case a few flies get past me? I once helped a friend of mine skin his first deer that he shot during bow season which was early September and we were trying to be very careful. However a few flies must have gotten past us since much of the meat was discovered later to have maggots. We even used good game bags. Any suggestions anyone?

In all seriousness I cant imagine taht you would have that much trouble and honestly flies, although icky, are the least of your problems...Get the meat cooled down FAST to controll spoilage and fly blow (eggs) can be spotted and wiped off LONG before they hatch not to mention that you are Probably butchering the meat in 3-ish days wich is sooner than a fly egg will hatch and IF they hatch well its just so much more protien. :wink:

 

[Supercracker]

if they are good for a fish that could be worth $ 1 million, they should work fine for game.

sorry to get OT but


WTH kind of fish is worth a mil????

 

[rabjr]

Ever see what Japanese pay for big Tuna. It would not surprise me.

 

[Supercracker]

there's something wrong with those people..................bad bad wrong

 

[rabjr]

And and they eat it raw!! :shocked2:

 

[Bill Hall]

I was in Japan for a while and ate alot of that stuff. If I was sure they didn't understand English, I would smile and tell them "Thanks for the cutbait". Bill

 

[ravenousfishing]

White Marlin during the Ocean City White Marlin Open. Last years fish was ONLY worth 900K because of the economy and lower number of entries. Several yars ago it paid something like 1.3M. http://www.whitemarlinopen.com/

 

[texcl]

Get a good cooler and fill it with ice and don't open it till you are ready to put the meat in. You will be amazed at how long ice lasts in a good cooler, now if you are hoofing it on foot I'd say pepper it and bag it but I don't have any real experience there. I hunt bear and deer when it is still in the 80's and I usually have 2 bags of ice just for the chest cavity if I'm more than an hour from the farm, I espeacially do this with bear since it has such good insulation. I think inproperly cooled bear has earned it place on the poor table fare list, properly done it tastes fine.

 

[Tb54]

Anyone rub the meat down with salt to help preserve it? Might hunt elk this year in sept. The last few years it’s been in the 80’s and I let the warm weather keep me from going after them. I’m getting hungry though. Also do pepper keep the yellow jackets away? They been bad here the last few years. I’m planning to pack in and I’m walking.

 

[Big Rviers]

If your hiking and packing out then you need to bone out the meat and pack it in game bags, get good ones, some butchers will sell them and then no need to pepper. Hopefully there's at least two of you cause your talking a heap pile of work. Establish your max. limit for dropping an animal, account for altitude. Better to pack down then up an out. Gut and skin out ASAP to speed cooling. Cut up into quarters and hang high under the trees in the shade. Take the best cuts, back strap rump roasts etc. Dump bones in the guts pile as you go so the flies and yellow jackets will concentrate there rather then around you. No one cooler will take that much meat so hang again in shade as high as you can get it. (stand on your truck roof). On your second trip back be sure to glass the kill from a distance. You can shoo wolves away, but once a bear has claimed your kill, well lets say bad things happen when you get between a bear and his food. Straight shooting, your in for one of the finest hunting experiences there is. Good luck.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

I got a nice fat doe years ago, from a crop damage harvest. I got a call on my way home from midnight shift, from the farmer. AUGUST and the temp was 95 at dawn. Would've been nice to have a warning the day before, that he was a goin' crop damage hunting...oh well a gift was a gift.

I had to move fast, and drove over and got her field dressed, and then hosed out her insides at the farm, but that only bought me a little time.

I drove the dressed doe home. I had just bought the wife a huge, resin plastic planter at Wally World. So I went up to the local market, got bags of ice and rock salt. Opened the bags and dumped the ice into the planter, and then dumped about 1/2 of the box of rock salt (for home made ice cream machines) on top of the ice. Then added enough water to fill the planter of salted ice about 2/3 of the way to the top. REALLY dropped the water temp, as it was supposed to do.

So I then began to skin her, and butcher her at the same time. As I removed a roast or such from the bone, sometimes with some bone still in the cut of meat, I put it into the very cold water/salt bath. The ice floated on top, and by shoving the meat below the ice layer, the flies couldn't get to it. Them flies was a bit thick around the carcass as I worked. Took me about 90 minutes to break her down. The skin went into a kitchen garbage bag, and then into the freezer in the kitchen for donation to the local historic site to demonstrate "brain tanning leather".

With the meat very cold, and under ice, I was then able to spend another couple of hours removing pieces, trimming and finishing de-boning, then wrapping the meat up for freezing. Didn't make the meat very salty either when it came time to cook it up.

Kind of a MacGyver approach, but it worked. I doubt the temps will be that bad for the OP.

LD

 

[GunnyGene]

My ancestors used a "powdering tub", back in the 1600's. Simply a large tub of coarse salt that you buried the meat in. Take out what you need for meals, brush off the salt back into the tub. But they didn't have to go far for game back then either. Neither do I, since I harvest on my land.

 

[Sparkitoff]

Citrus juice spray (of course you can put it in your own spray bottle) will keep flys off the meat but will wash off easily later and is not offensive in the meanwhile.

 

[Kobuk]

Up here in Alaska we use a product called Game Saver. It comes in a powder form and you mix with water. We skin and quarter or bone out the meat at the site, get back to camp then pull the bags off and basically wash the meat down to clean it all up real nice with the game saver solution. From then on we will mist every day or so as to not let it be wet and it will keep fly blow off and it is supose to actually change the ph of the surface which slows spoilage. I believe it's just citric acid, and is odorless and flavorless. You can also presoak your game bags with it then let them air dry and it is supose to keep the fly blow off too. I haven't tried that because we haven't needed to. As others have said, the faster you get it cooled the better. For guys that hunt in a hot area that has power or a generator, what about using a portable window style AC unit and basically make a tent with a tarp and have that AC unit cool it down during the day?

 

[renegadehunter]

I hunt September for archery elk every year when it's still getting to the mid eighties during the day.
As soon as it is recovered it is gutted, skinned, and quartered immediately. If in a really terrible spot it will just simply get boned out on the spot. A good pack frame and parachute cord is worth its weight in gold. We've never had enough issues with flies to worry us, but bees can be horrible some years...we just deal with them and go as quickly as we can to get the meat into game bags. If it is a morning kill, then when we get back to camp it goes straight into the pickup and gets hauled to the nearest walk-in cooler, for us that is about 40 minutes away. If it was shot in the evening, then back at camp it gets hung overnight. It has always been dark by the time we get back to camp, and the bees and flies aren't an issue once it's dark so we hang it uncovered so it can cool better (first thing we do in a new camp is put up a meat pole). You have to be up before daylight, as the flies and bees find it quickly at first light. Game bags go back on and it gets hauled to the cooler. We've never tried to hang one any longer than overnight, we just drop everything and get it to a cooler as soon as we can...but again, we're only 40 minutes out from a cooler.
If you were in a cool draw and good shade, and a nice little creek seems to help too, then it could probably go a couple of days. Uncover at night so it can cool, and then put good thick game bags on during the day to insulate the meat from the warm air and to keep flies & bees off of it. Really thick blankets over that would help too, you want to insulate it well and keep the cool in and hot out. Coolers would work for boned out meat, I'd leave the drain open so the meat doesn't end up sitting in water. A really thick blanket over the cooler really helps to insulate it too.

 

[Adui]

I got a nice fat doe years ago, from a crop damage harvest. I got a call on my way home from midnight shift, from the farmer. AUGUST and the temp was 95 at dawn. Would've been nice to have a warning the day before, that he was a goin' crop damage hunting...oh well a gift was a gift.

I had to move fast, and drove over and got her field dressed, and then hosed out her insides at the farm, but that only bought me a little time.

I drove the dressed doe home. I had just bought the wife a huge, resin plastic planter at Wally World. So I went up to the local market, got bags of ice and rock salt. Opened the bags and dumped the ice into the planter, and then dumped about 1/2 of the box of rock salt (for home made ice cream machines) on top of the ice. Then added enough water to fill the planter of salted ice about 2/3 of the way to the top. REALLY dropped the water temp, as it was supposed to do.

So I then began to skin her, and butcher her at the same time. As I removed a roast or such from the bone, sometimes with some bone still in the cut of meat, I put it into the very cold water/salt bath. The ice floated on top, and by shoving the meat below the ice layer, the flies couldn't get to it. Them flies was a bit thick around the carcass as I worked. Took me about 90 minutes to break her down. The skin went into a kitchen garbage bag, and then into the freezer in the kitchen for donation to the local historic site to demonstrate "brain tanning leather".

With the meat very cold, and under ice, I was then able to spend another couple of hours removing pieces, trimming and finishing de-boning, then wrapping the meat up for freezing. Didn't make the meat very salty either when it came time to cook it up.

Kind of a MacGyver approach, but it worked. I doubt the temps will be that bad for the OP.

LD

Might not be the most accepted method, but every deer I ever took was treated in this fashion and my venison was always tasty, and not gamey.

 

[Bad Karma]

I debone completely these days , I haven't packed out bone other than antlers in probably 15 years. It's fast, only partof the meatis exposed at any given time, and the meat cools quickly.

 

[45man]

Always a problem here where it is too hot in early seasons. I can hang over night if cool or butcher the same day but I usually just don't hunt if too hot, no coolers around to get to. Body heat must get out.
Made a mistake once after cutting and had to go to work. I put the meat in the crisper of the fridge. In contact it turned black.

 

[pnw]

Have your plan in place before you create that cloud. Blow flys and micros well have there way with you very quickly at those temps. Bottom line, cool and away from takers fast. Get after it!!!

 

[sawyer04]

Great to see you on line Wes! I been thinking about you and wondering what was going on. Give me a holler when you get back up north. I'm around all summer.

On the freezer/generator in the truck, we have a family from Texas that comes to our place in the Southwest dragging a horse trailer. No horses, but it holds all their camping gear plus a chest freezer and generator. Works great!

We just put a freezer in the back of a pickup truck along with a small generator from Harbor Freight. Works great, the generator just has to run enough to keep things cool.