Best way to keep deer meat cold when hunting in warm weather?

Dads Son

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I'm planning to do some deer hunting this summer with red tags. The farms are about 4 or 5 hour drive from my place. What's the best way to make sure the meat stays good till I get home? Can I just fill it with bags of ice or should I quarter it or skin it? Any information is greatly appreciated. Any links to videos would be helpful as well.
Thank You
 
You can get jumbo food safe plastic bags that will fit each quarter. They're large enough you can set the meat in the bag, bag in the cooler, and drape the lid of the bag out of the cooler (to keep water from the meat). Pack with ice and you're good. I just did a weekend hog butcher in 95 degree heat and max humidity with that method.
 
Start drinking milk or juice in the 1/2 gallon size containers. Freeze them full of water before you leave. Inside a cooler those blocks of ice last longer than bags of ice and you can keep the meat dry easier.
 
To add to the milk jugs for ice, we drink a lot of simply lemonade at our house. I save those jugs and the tops. When we need ice I will freeze them. A little bit heavier plastic and if you don't freeze them too long the plastic will not break. That way you can keep the water in the coolers to a minimum.
Strut
 
For summer hog killings, we make an ice, salt, and water slurry (like making homemade ice cream) then just quarter them and throw them in the slurry. Should work perfectly for deer too no farther than you have to travel to get back home. It should get down to 26 degrees or so in your cooler.
 
Just field dressing the deer immediately will begin the cooling process. If you're dead set on taking the entire deer home, I'd field dress it and shove a few bags of ice in the cavity for the ride home. But, why take the deer all the way home? I hunted the California A zone for years and have been hunting Hawaii for the past six years. I've killed more deer in warm/hot weather than cool. I'm almost always boning the deer out within a few hours vs. field dressing/skinning/butchering. It's not hard to get every once of edible meat off a deer in an hour.

Once you've removed all the meat, put it in a cooler with ice and you're good for days. I usually lay my meat on top of the ice to prevent "bleaching" but in fact the ice doesn't hurt the meat at all. I've used several brands of meat bags but an old cotton pillow case works just as well. Either way, heavy duty commercial meat bags and pillow cases can be washed and re-used.
 
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