The bear is down! Now what do you do?

[bogwalker]

How do you handle your bear from the woods to the freezer?

[icehousebob]

My nephew and I both got bears on opening day a while back. We had used styrafoam insulation board to turn a two wheeled covered trailer into a rolling ice chest. When the bear drops, the clock is ticking. Gut it fast and get ice into the body cavity. After checking it in, we packed them in about 100 pounds of ice for overnight. Next morning, we skinned and quartered them and packed them in more ice for the trip home. The following morning, we butchered them and got them in the freezer. The meat turned out great.

[Boar]

I hunt with in a 45 mn. of home an most times 20 minuets so it's just a matter of shoot, track, gut, drag, hang, skin, quarter, an into the cooler asap, then debone in the mourning. Always have great tasting meat. I feel for you guys that have distances to go, an have three times the preperation so the meat dosent start to spoil an hide dont slip. Boar

[Muthagoose]

FROM BOOM to Freezer about 3 hours.

All but one has dropped dead in the site, so I can drive up roll it into a trailer and back it right under the hoist. We keep the trailer near by for trimmings.Trimming fats easiest when fresh.Running water is a huge help.

Got the hoist,butcher table,2 freezers filled with ice blocks so keeping meat ,hide draining/chilled while you work. to the vaccum packer set up.Its all there ready to go....

[Matt Breuer]

I'm with boar on this one. I feel for the guys who have to travel or utilize lockers or skinners. Once we have a bear down we gut it, toss in a block of ice, drive at most 20 minutes, then skin it, quarter it, and toss it in the freezer.

[charliepete]

It used to be a pain when I didn't have my own place. We'd have to barter with the resort owners or pay a meat market and try to get them to open up late in the night. I ended up loosing one of my nicest bears to a crummy freezer that didn't quite work at a resort.

My 1970's vintage trailer may not be the Ritz (or lets face it even have running water), but it does have a chest freezer. It's got enough man cave to it that we can wrap bear or early season deer in a sheet of plastic and drop them in the deep freeze whole. That way you can enjoy a cocktail and celebrate, and work on the animal the next day with full light and it will be just cold enough to do a professional job on the cuts.

[Random guy]

Clients; Gut, vent, and haul directly to our on site walk in cooler/freezer. If the bear is to be skinned and qutered it happens ASAP. If they wish top haul it home its get the super cool down and prepped for travel to the clients local meat locker/butcher.

Mine gut, skun and hauled to the lady who loves bear meat so much I kill and she cuts.

During this procces not one drop of water touches the meat. No washing and no ice melting as several quality butchers have warned against this.

[Boar]

Why no water JP, whats up with that? speed up bacteria breaking down flesh? I've washed mine manytimes an havent noticed anythign odd. Boar