Ep. 59: Meat Care Tips for the Traveling Hunter

and now you've got to bowl down. You pat yourself on the back, and now you realize, now what, Because traveling with a boatload of meat can honestly be a logistical nightmare, especially if you haven't thought ahead of time. So this week is all about traveling hunter and meatcare. Maybe you're headed out west for a hunt for deer, antelope, elk, maybe flying into remote hunt in Alaska somewhere, or just driving across the state you live in for a special

draw tag. I'm gonna share my full proof methodology to literally bringing home the bacon and break down traveling hunter meet care logistics. But before we do that, let's head down to Old Mexico for a story of Murphy and the Traveling Buffalo. If you've hunted long enough or pretty much done anything with any amount of time and wanted some form of certainty. The certainty is that you will

run into a man I know very well. We call him Murphy because his law is whatever can go wrong will go wrong, and he's the guy that's going to stick it to you more times than most. Most trips essentially are just dodging old Murph, is the way I like to think about it. Now, this particular trip was a while ago, and I was filming for this show

that I used to do called Apex Predator. We were down in Mexico and we're kind of testing this theory of using like a wolf hide based off of a Catlan painting where Native Americans would use wolves to sneak in on elk because they would see humans and run, but their natural defense mechanism was to stay put when they see wolves because if they run, then the wolf would incite to chase, and then that buffalo would essentially be dead. So I thought, let's try this old technique

of putting a wolf hide. I only had a coyote hide over my back and then sneaking in on these buffalo. Now, as you can imagine, that sounds like a recipe for interactions with Old Murphy, and it was nothing like on This trip really went as planned. I was just got done guiding in Montana and there was this one open window, so I flew down from Montana to Arizona, met up

with some guys. They flew from all over parts of the country, so people from Colorado, another guy from I think Montana, New York and what everyone was kind of spread out. So we rent a vehicle in Arizona and just to start the ship off. Here's how it goes. Because we rented a off road like four by four vehicle and we show up and essentially it's like this Dodge caravan car kind of thing. It is absolutely in no way, shape or form like a good off road vehicle.

This thing, I don't, I gotta. I'm gonna dig up a picture of this damn car. It was like, here's our vehicle to travel through the dusty off roads of Mexico to this ranch down there that we were hunting, and hunt like parts of this ranch in this tiny

little car. And so I think we ended up getting an extra van as well, because there was absolutely no way we were gonna all fit in this car and it had zero off road capabilities, but the van was also not off roadable, so we got those car is in full insurance, of course, for the best insurance they could give us for that, and we headed down across the border. We essentially got into Mexico with pretty much no incident, you know, the normal like border struggles troubles

because we had guns and had to stop. Um. I had a rifle because I was gonna be cused deer hunting as well. So we're trying to kind of do these two episodes in in one trip. CU's deer buffalo, so the old buffalo hunt, and uh, we kind of

ended up without the off road capabilities. Had to park in one spot and do a lot of walking, which is fine, you know, maybe not necessarily fine when you're planning on like shooting a giant buffalo and trying to get it back to camp and everything very fairly quickly. But you know, we just took the lumps that were

given us. So of course, I think it was maybe the first day just how this trip starting out, like we're kind of scouting around trying to figure out where we're gonna hunt, where the buffalo are whatever, And I've got my tripod and then like hi power binoculars because it's perfect for glassing for that like long distance glassing.

Even for the buffalo, they could be hard to find, big open like kind of that desert thinking like Southwest style country, lots of mesquite and whatever in big area, and so the high powered optics are really crucial for spotting stuff. So we're just like previewing the area, kind of taking the main roads that we could actually drive on, seeing how far we could get in certain places. And I was just trying to glass a long ways away see if I can find a spot where it's like okay,

let's let's go check that spot out. I get back in the car, shut the doors, drive forward, and just I'm like, oh, ship, what happened? Get out? Like right off the bat ran over my tripod and optics in the car, Like, well that sucks. Brand new pair of binoculars. I was like, man, thank god they're Vortex because they had a warranty on them. Like sweet, but sucks. Right, So I'm like putting back these binoculars that I just ran over in our in our pos car, and now

we're gonna hunt. So kind of just fast forward through the hunt. Because some stuff went wrong, like stocked in everything worked out. I ended up making like not a good shot with my bow and then ended up having to shoot buffalo with a rifle. So it was just a cluster. Like from the beginning, everything was just kind of just going the wrong way. Like whatever, you know, I keep I'm the type of person because things go wrong, just keep a good positive attitude. It's all good. Whatever.

So now we've got this buffalo down, it's like awesome. Start butchering the buffalo, hanging the quarters up, packing it back to the vehicle, which was a lot further than it could have been if we had like an actual offer road vehicle that we were supposedly going to have. So now we get back and it's like, okay, now what, We've got a giant buffalo a lot of meat that

we're gonna bring back. Luckily, you know, I was prepared for this, so I had like a ton of zip baggies, We had a lot of cellophane, and there was a ranch house there that had electricity with a freezer that we could use, so that was all set up ahead of time. Knew all this. So now it's Butcher day, going through Butcher and cutting up large pieces of meat, just kind of chunking everything to where it, wrapping it in the cellophane and then stuffing it in the ziplock

and freezing it. Now the plan is we had we actually had one big cooler, a couple actually a couple of big coolers that we were traveling down there with, you know, to store our stuff in. Anyways. So now we travel back across the boarder. We actually got across the border no problems, you know, showed all the paperwork and the meat and this that and the other thing that was actually fairly seamless. Wasn't too bad. We're gonna

fly back from Tucson. So we actually got a couple of smaller coolers because we decided we're gonna split the meat up. Everybody. Everybody that was on the cruise like working so hard and carried meat, like helped with the butchering. It's like, I was like, guys, this is our buffalo. We're gonna split this buffalo four ways. It's like everyone was pretty stoked on that. So we got some extra coolers so everybody could take their buffalo whatever home. Everything

was still frozen like sweet. So we get to the airport. There's like four of us, all this production gear, all this and just coolers out the ass, just a lot, a lot of meat. And then we got the news that something was wrong with the plane and our flight was going to be delayed, the flight out of twos So we're like, okay till when you know. And we're all flying to different places too, so it shouldn't have

been a problem. But there's some I can't even remember what the deal was, but whatever happened was we weren't going to fly out that day, so I go crap, and we've got all this buffalo meat, but it's not gonna last as long as this delay is. So we're running back to Walmart buy some dry ice stacking in the coolers. We actually just called a bunch of hotels and asked any if they had a freezer. One of them finally had a freezer, so we chose that hotel and we go to that hotel and we're like, hey,

can we store some stuff in your freezer? Like yep, So we put these coolers in the freezer. Now we're waiting for a flight. The flight ends up being delayed a day and a half, but we're like, all right now. It's it's all good, cool, we should be fine. We end up getting on our flight. I've got the buffalo. I fly into my first stop, should be not a problem, Salt Lake City. Like sweet, Get to Salt Lake, get off the plane. They're like all flights are canceled to

where I was going, which was Missoula. There was like this inversion in Missoula and no flights had been going in and out for days, so it's just like too foggy to land. I'm like, crap, Okay, what are we gonna do. I was like, I've got this buffalo and it's just cannot sit out in the airport for that long. So I end up renting a car, then driving from Salt Lake back up to where my truck was at the airport, dropping off the rental car. Awesome. Now I've got my truck and the buff low. Now I realized,

but I was not going. My final destination was not there. I had a twelve hour drive back to where I was going. So I get in my truck. The buffalo is all in the truck and now I'm driving. I'm trying to keep this buffalo frozen and stopped. I stop again, re dry, ice, refreeze everything finally get home, However many days it took us later, buffalo fully intact, no meat spoilage,

still all frozen, good to go. No matter what those logistical things throughout me, I was definitely prepared enough to take care of all the problems, all the travel delays, all that stuff, and get the meat home completely safe, completely fine, and definitely had one of the best backstrap meals of wild game I've ever had shortly after my big old buffalo prime rib for Christmas a few days later.

If I come to think about it, I would probably consider myself one of the world's foremost experts in traveling with game meat. I have traveled literally hundreds of thousands of miles via air and vehicle and every mode, boat doesn't matter. Like I've honestly traveled every way, shape and form with game meat. I mean, I've taken meat back from places as far as New Zealand and places that are hot like Hawaii, or I've also even just from trips that are halfway across the state but driving six

eight hours in the summer. It's just if there's a scenario where I've had process and take meat back backcountry of Alaska, from small planes to big planes to a couple of different connection flights. I've done it, and because of that, I've kind of broken down some of the logistical thoughts that you need to think before every hunt where you're going, even if you're just going a few hours away, to make sure that you're going to get that meat home in good condition and not go bad.

Over the years, I have never lost any meat while traveling, and I've had some major mishaps like things delayed, things lost, you know, just whatever you can encounter, I've probably encountered it. So I'm just gonna go over a few of the logistical things that you should think about. Now. If we're talking about traveling with me, I would say there's three options. So in these three options come into play whether you're you know, planning your hunt or already going on your hunt, whatever.

So your option would be to drive, to ship, or to fly, and all these are broken down in kind of a cost slash pain in the ass factor. So let's start with drive. Driving is going to be the cheapest and probably in my opinion, the easiest, logistically best way to go somewhere and get your meat back home. Whatever. Now, the downside to driving is it takes time, and it also may not fit into your schedule. Like if you if you're traveling and you've got a thirty hour drive

both ways, that's cutting into hunt time. I would say most of the time for me personally, if I'm going somewhere further away, I end up flying, and a lot of the places maybe you can't even drive to. So it's just something to think about that factors into the decision making of the logistics of how you're getting there

and how you're getting your meat back. I will say, though, if you are driving, the best ways to obviously bring large coolers or I've even seen guys that really prepare bring a trailer that I might have a freezer that they can plug in. The large coolers is great because what I do is if I am traveling along ways, I'll then put the meat in the cooler and I'll use dry ice to keep it cool. Now, if I've processed it before I head home, I'll use the dry

ice to freeze it. And to do that, you put the dry ice on top of whatever you want, so dry ice on top that freezes it. Make sure you crack event in the cooler so you don't make a little cooler bomb and your truck up I don't know if it's actually player truck up. But or to refrigerate you use the dry ice actually on the bottom. So I'll put dry ice on the bottom of the cooler. I'll probably cover it with something like a piece of cardboard or whatever so it doesn't freeze what's right above it,

and then I'll start stacking some meat in there. Another option you can use wet ice. I just don't really like traveling long distances with wet ice because it gets that meat soaked in water. The best way to use wet ice would be used blocks on the bottom, set your meat on the top, and then pop that drain plug open so that way it's never really sitting fully in water. But the dry ice, or even just using dry ice on the bottom, block ice and then the meat on top. That kind of helps prevent it from

melting so fast. You can really find dry ice anywhere the most A lot of grocery stores sell it. Um even I've founded it like a I don't know if it's like a national place, but place called nor Code.

It's like I think it's like a welding supply company, but they sometimes have it, you know, wherever I'm going on a hunt, even if I'm driving or whatever, I'll call a few places around before ahead of time and just say, hey, do you guys sell dry ice, um, grocery stores, whatever, just to understand what I might need. Now if they don't, I do have like a small chest freezer that I have thrown in and I can you can plug that in when you're wherever you're at

hotel whatever at night, bring an extension cord. I've done that too. Where I knew I'm going for a while, it's going to be a long drive, maybe a couple of day drive. I've got this freezer and I'm using it to keep everything frozen, to keep it refrigerated. Maybe you didn't have time to butcher it. Then you know you're gonna want to go with something like the cooler with ice or dry ice in it. Now, the next

option is, wherever you're going, the shipping option. This is definitely the most expensive option, but it's definitely I would say the least pain in the ass. This is one I rarely do because it is so expensive. What it involves is finding a butcher's shop or meat processing place near where you're hunting, dropping the meat off and then having them ship it to you wherever you live. This

is really good for people that are flying. The times that I have done this places in Alaska, like with a moose, I just didn't have time or didn't really logistically prepare to have everything figured out ahead of time, so I dropped the moose off, had it processed, and then shipped back. After the price tag on that and my disappointment and how poorly everything was butchered, I kind of swore that off. But there are really good butchers and and processors that do a great job. You know,

you can have a great experience. Actually, for our my outfitting business, my clients, we use a butcher nearby and it's incredible. I mean I would take things there over doing it myself because they do such a good job. We you know, we trust them with that job for a lot of our clients and they do a really good job with it. So there are pluses and minus is to that, but it is definitely the easiest, most thoughtless,

best way to figure out logistics. If you don't have a lot of time or don't have maybe extra time after to deal with all the meat. You got to think about when you're planning a hunt, you need to factor in days for taking care of meat or getting the meat home some way, And that is a huge part that I think people kind of forget about. They go on a hunt. They say, Okay, I'm hunting from this day to this day and then flying out the

next day. If you don't leave yourself some days to figure out the logistics and take care of the meat, then you're probably gonna be in a situation where you go, oh crap, now what, I don't have time, I don't have the right things. This is a lot more than I thought, and you're probably going to run the risk

of that meat going bad. So the shipping one, finding a good butcher, and then when you're talking about shipping, so that most of the cost actually comes in not necessarily from paying the butcher, which is a cost, but that's the kind of cost that I wouldn't necessarily mind. The cost that I do mind is those exorbitant shipping costs. So the reason that's so expensive is because a lot of them might have to ship overnight, so they'll freeze it, they'll box it up in sixty pound boxes and then

they overnight it. If you live let's say you're hunting in Montana and you live in Minnesota, that's gonna be a six dollar bill to a thousand dollars to ship that meat back home. That can be crazy. Now think about being somewhere like Alaska or somewhere else. Man, We're talking some serious, hefty price tags just to ship that meat back. So there's other options for shipping that you

can figure out ahead of time. One's called air freight. Now, what air freight is is it's essentially putting the baggage on a plane as luggage. Back in the day, you used to be able to air freight things yourself. You can no longer do that, so you have to go through a preferred or registered shipper. But in places like Alaska or maybe some other remote places, many of the

meat processors actually are registered air freight shippers. You might even maybe you're even doing a d i y hunt, but there's an outfitter in the area that might be registered air freight. You can connect with them, throw them a few extra bones to ship something air freight. That might be an option as well. Air Freight is a lot cheaper. I've actually shipped like an entire moose back for under two hundred bucks air freight, so there is a lot of options. I shipped actually a Roosevelt elk

from a fog Nec. One time I took one back on the plane. The other time we just air freighted it. The air freight option was definitely the best way to go. Is like a hundred bucks. And it came back and I just had to pick it up at the airport a couple of days later, and everything was still frozen. I shipped it, you know, in a in a large cooler, and it was perfect. And then the other option would

be a ground shipping. The way that ground shipping is done would be everything is processed, packaged and frozen, and then it's put into say a large cooler with dry ice on the top, vented and then shipped the ground. I don't suggest this way. It is the cheapest way you can do it. I have seen it and before I mean most of the time ground will get back in three to four days. I've seen it done. I

guess I've done it once. I had no problems with it, but it just seems like a little dicey in my opinion, you have to have the dry ice labeled on there. You have to have everything labeled a certain way. There's restrictions for it, but it is another option to think about. So if you get somewhere, you've got everything processed, you've got a little bit of time, everything is frozen, you can ship it ground. It will definitely save you some money there. So now we'll go into the third option,

which would be fly. This is the way that I do most of my hunts because a lot of them might be in places I can't drive to or I don't have the time to drive, and it just might be easier to fly. I think, if you're flying somewhere for a hunt, in my opinion, the best way to take me back is just to fly it back with you. Now, it seems like a lot, yes, but I've got some tricks for making it a little bit better over the years.

The first thing is plan plan on bringing meat back and having time to take care of it before you go. You're also gonna need some certain supplies. So those supplies include bags, some kind of bags, whether it's a freezer bag, zip block bag, vacuum seal bag, wrap like cellophane wrap, and then some kind of cooler, and then freezer packs and then extra extra large duffel bags and contractor garbage bags. So if you have all that stuff, you pretty much

have everything you need to process. Then you're gonna have to find a place wherever you're flying in or out of, you know, somewhere after the hunt. But maybe that has a freezer that you can use, whether it's a hotel, a motel, maybe even a processor around the area that has freezer space some kind of freezer, because that really helps with this whole process. And I'll give you some tips on if there is no freezer as well. So

what I do is I try to essentially. I mean, if I don't, there's not always time to process the meat. But what I will do is cut in to large chunks and then I will bag and freeze. You know, you say, well, does that mess the quality of the meat to freeze, because you're gonna de thought when you get home and then reprocess, re butcher it whatever, clean it up, and then freeze it again. It does a little bit, but you kind of have to weigh your

options of what's better. Now. The best option for me is to butcher it wherever i'm at and then take it home. I think one thing that I've found is

super helpful on a traveled hunt is Airbnb. Now, at the end of a hunt, I generally book like an Airbnb house somewhere because then I have room to butcher, I have a kitchen, and I have a freezer, and for the you know, I'm gonna need a place to stay anyways after the hunt, So for the price of that, it's way easier to take care of everything doing it that way, going that route, I'm a huge fan of, like at the end of the hunt, having a day or two it an Airbnb to just clean everything up,

to package it, to get everything ready, so when i go home home, it's easy and I'm saving money on processing costs, I'm saving money on shipping costs, and I'm saving probably time and money on the drive as well.

So that's a great way to think about it. What I do is I actually bring I've got one of these made with meat like vacuum sealers, just like a standard vacuum sealer, and I bring that in my luggage on my hunt with me when I fly in, and then I have vacuum bags as well, so I have that I'll take like a I've got like a Gerber filet knife, like a fish fleet knife. That's what I butcher with, like a six inch blade, and then you know you have your I'll bring like a soft sided

YETI cooler. I've got like this one that's a back flip. It's a backpack. So when I'm flying somewhere, I have that is my carry on and then I put my meat in that. Afterwards it fits about a whole butchered deer. Anything extra over that, I'll actually just put in garbage bags in my duffel bag and then frozen. And then you think like, okay, well will that last. Yeah, so that's what the freezer packs are for. I'll use the freezer packs in that duffel and then honestly, it's really

cold underneath the plane. And I actually intentionally fly Alaska Airlines a lot because they do have cold storage in a couple of their hubs. So you say, hey, this is frozen, they'll slap a frozen sticker on it, and when it lands, if you get stuck or it has to sit, they'll just go put that in a freezer for you. And a lot of people don't realize that. So even down to choosing the airline that I'm going to use, I try to find one that's pretty friendly

with that kind of stuff. Now, let's say you don't have a lot of time, like you get it the like how many times do you get something the last day and you don't have a lot of time to process or whatever. Maybe you don't have time to freeze or you can't find somewhere as freezer. Then what I do is I wrap it in the cell offhane they take to me to cut it into chunks, wrapping cellfane.

I bag it neither my zip blocks or if you've got the vacuum seeler thing down, bring that seal it up, and then I will I'll bring like these freezer packs, yetti ice, different kinds of freezer pack, you know, it's like that blue liquid freezer things. I'll bring a couple of those in my bag because I've found that they're nearly impossible to find somewhere on a hunt. There's been times where I'm like, oh, I'll just buy one. Wherever

I'm at, they're always unfrozen. I can't find them. So if I bring some with me, then I get a hotel room or a motel or a airbnb. I can throw those in the freezer and get those frozen for the trip home. Then I will put that meat in my cooler with those frozen freezer packs in with it, and for the duration of most flights, that's always been enough to get me home. Now, the things you have to worry about, you can fly with me. The only thing you can't have is something that starts to leak.

So if you have something that leaks and starts is leaking blood places, that's gonna get pulled out thrown away. So that's why I wrap it and cellophane, I bag it and then I put everything in like a garbage sack if I'm sticking it in my luggage with those freezer packs, and then I have them put the frozen stickers on it keeping the cold part of the plane.

And I've never had anything bad. Probably the longest would be like a thirty thirty five hour journey, And almost everything that I've had frozen ahead of time is still frozen when I get back, and then things that might be slightly defrosted are still extremely cold. So that's the

way that you can fly with it. Thinking ahead of time, planning it out and having those items where you can say, Okay, I'm gonna butcher it at the end of my trip, whether it's out in the field, cut it up, bag it into just chunks of meat that you can process later at home. As far as the grind goes, I just do like when I'm cutting it up, I do my big cuts of steaks. However I like to butcher it. You know, how very much time I have depends on how minute my cuts go. And then just one big

bag of grind. That bag of grind I tend to freeze, and then I'd actually just defrosted and grind it later in the year whenever I've got time back at home. So if you follow those steps and kind of think about it logistically, think about your options ahead of time, and then ways to bring back, you know you're you're gonna be a lot better off. I will say, the flying way, you know, you just check that and meat now is extra luggage and it is a lot cheaper

than shipping it. Having done it multiple ways over the years, I've kind of factored out the prices for myself and my clients and whatever. If you're flying, that's the cheapest way to bring it back with you, the easiest ways to ship it, and to avoid all those headaches in the beginning, just drive to your hunting location. I think with that logistical knowledge, you're well on your way to taking whatever meat you get wherever you are back home safely. It's that time of year, you know a lot of

people are either gearing up or already heading out. So I hope that you guys find a lot of success and please keep those success stories coming. I mean, I've really been enjoying seeing that you can always reach me at remy warrant on Instagram. That's probably where I'm the most active. You can follow along on some of my hunts, and I'd love to see how you guys are doing it. It really is awesome to get tagged in those photos and see your guys success and the tactics that you've

been using or or ways that you've been successful. So I really appreciate that. Keep that coming, you know. I like to mention too, you know, if you enjoy this podcast, please share it with your friends, share it on social media or whatever you got, whatever you want to do. I really appreciate that. Feel free to to subscribe and comment. And give us a good rating. That just only helps fuel the podcast for the future. So I really appreciate

everybody that does that. Thank you very much. And coming up, we're gonna be just going into some more like advanced hunting tactics, covering things like lasting midday, some strategies for deer and and other things. You know, keep those questions coming in because that really fuels the direction of where we go. If I start getting a lot of questions about something. This particular topic was something that I got a lot of questions on, how do I get home

with alchemy? How do I get home with dear meat going on my first hunt? How do I do this? How do I do that? I love that kind of stuff because it really gives this podcast a direction for the most of you out there thinking about a listening. You know, I want this to be helping make you better and kind of covering the topics that you really want covered. So feel free to reach out any time. I always appreciate it. I always appreciate your input, and

thank you very much. Until then, keep that meat on ice.