Cooling Moose
 

Hi Guys
We are going on a fly-in moose trip this year
Once we're in, we're in for the week
Wondering if anyone has any suggestions for cooling a moose and keeping it cool if we happen to shoot one at the front end of the trip and the weather is warm.
Wondering about the possibility/practicality of deboning and putting the meat into dry bags and putting it into the lake.
Thx
Sundog

Call the plane and tell him to come and pick it up they'll probably have to make an extra trip anyway if you shoot a moose

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Get
 

The hide off as quick as possible.If it's real early black pepper then game bags to keep the flies off.

To pile on to pioneers suggestion. Costco has fine black pepper in large shaker plastic jugs.The coarse pepper doesn't adhere as well. You miss a spot the blue arsed flies will find.Good luck on your trip.

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Where are you going on a fly in?

Depending where you are, it may be cool enough to hang in the shade where it is breezy for the meat to stay nice and cool. Most important thing is to get the hide off within minutes of the animal going down in my opinion. We did a fly in moose hunt last year. Shot one the first day, and it hung all week on the lake shore in the shade and breeze with daytime highs of 12-17 degrees at the highest. No issues at all. Just take very good care of it, get that hide off, get it hanging and wipe it down then gamebag it for the flies. We also wiped it down with a half water half vinegar mixture before bagging.

Get the hide off the moose right away. De-bone the meat, you don't want to pay the freight to haul out bone. Wrap in good cheese cloth sacks. If it is cool enough you can hang the sacks up high out of reach and pepper the meat. It needs to be getting no more than 10 C or so and be in the shade full time or meat will start to go off after a couple of days.

If it is warm out and you can't get the plane back, dig a pit into the moss, under the trees in shade. Peel back the top layer of moss to re-use as a cover. Go as far down as you can easily shovel, the deeper it is the cooler it will be. Line the bottom and up the sides with fresh spruce bows. Place meat in cheese cloth in the hole, cover with more spruce bows then cover with the a couple of good layers of moss. You will need to rig up a warning system and taking along a small battery powered bear fence is always a good idea up north. One around camp, one around the meat stash.

If you have a large enough Yeti, you can use that as the container in the ground instead of spruce bows. You will find that often the ground is still frozen or nearly so a couple of feet down if you are very far up north. We have kept fresh meat in a ground locker for weeks and it is still good.