Am hunting Elk in New Mexico first week in October near Alamogordo. I absolutely have to bring back the meat and am curious what my options are. I have investigated flying out, renting a car to drive back with the meat and have it processed locally. Is it possible to take it somewhere in Alamogordo, Albuquerque, or El Paso, have it processed there and shipped to Ca? The rental car will cost me over $500 and a couple days of my time lost from work.

Has anyone shipped Elk meat home? Or had experience with driving dressed game home over a couple days to have it processed?

Any suggestions or experiences would be greatly appreciated.

thanks,

Sean Browne
La Honda, Ca

I have friends of mine who ship tuna from California to Texas all the time. Get it processed there in NM and have them freeze it hard and arrange next day delivery. It is not cheap though.

I'm driving to Wyoming in September and it's only a 14 hour drive for me. I can do that in one day easily.

Driving your elk meat home is probaly going to be the cheapest way in the long run. My last bull elk produced 260 lbs of meat, cut and wrapped. Shipping that much weight in a freezer truck might be spendy!
If you do drive home invest in a couple of large coolers and have your elk boned out and cooled down before you pack it in the cooler. Place bags of ice on the cooled meat (without opening the bags, so as no water on the meat) and you should be fine.

We bring it every year ourselves from Colorado to South Texas. Pack it in coolers and use dry ice. Wrap the dry ice in burlap as to not burn the meat. Works really well.

my buddy and i usually bring two elk back home from northern new mexico (about 1300 miles). we bone the meat out and put it in several of the large white coolers (guessing about 100 qts each). we mix ice in the meat and leave the drain open. we make the drive home in two days, open the coolers and check the meat one time and add a little ice, and take the meat to our local processor the day we arrive home. been doing this for at least 10 years and never lost any meat.

i have paid to fly processed meat over 1000 miles only one time. it was very, very, very expensive, and i won't be doing it again.

before you decide to have the meat processed in the kill state, ensure you know what it is going to cost. call your airlines and inquire about flying frozen meat with dry ice. some airlines are quite particular when it comes to dry ice these days.

just be sure what you are signing up for before you leave home.

hope you have a great hunt and kill a good bull. nothing quite like elk hunting!

I suggest find a shipper for air freight. Air freight is a bargain. I had a Mercruiser outdrive shipped from Florida to Massachusetts for $35. I had to pick it up at the airport. I would have it processed, frozen hard, packed in coolers with dry ice, seal the coolers with duct tape. That alone will keep for 5-6 days. Airfreight only takes about 1 day, but must be shipped through a shipper that does air freight.

Your outfitter should be able to set you up with a processor who ships, or he should be able to arrange shipping some other way. Airfreight is a good option, but as said, the new security requirements on freight make it a bit of a hassle.

Truck freight is really not an option, as the LTL guys published rates are absurdly high. However, you could call someone like FFE and see what it would cost to ship a frozen pallet. Should be about $300 to maybe $400. Airfreight will be half that, but there will be some packaging expenses. FWIW, Dutch.

I hopefully will be in the same dilema this October. What we plan on doing is shipping our clothes (maybe guns) home by UPS ground and checking the frozen meat as our baggage. The meat boxes most processors use won't be oversized, so you will only need to pay the additional weight charge depending on what your box weighs. Most airlines have a limit of either 70 or 100#. You can check an extra piece of luggage for more money.

Hope this helps.

Although I've never shipped elk home before, I did ship some halibut from Alaska back to Mississippi just to give you an idea of the potential cost.

I shipped about 70 lbs of frozen fish overnight using FedEx, and the cost was right at $200. Granted, you're not going as far from NM to CA as I was; however, you will be shipping more weight.

Good luck with the hunt!

The only thing I will caution you about is the fact that some states do not allow "meat on the bone" to enter their state. Check the states you are transporting through and into.

How ya gonna get it to the airport? Alamogordo (or the mountains east of there) is a pretty good hop up to the only commercial service in the state at Albuquerque. And why would you fly one way and drive the other?

My advice is to drive your own vehicle both ways. If you have a pickup (or similar SUV) you can place the quartered meat in plastic garbage bags and ice them down in nothing fancier than a big cardboard box. Pile on a few dollars worth of ice (in the unopened bags) once to twice per day on your trip home, and you'll arrive in good shape (or at least your elk meat will be; you'll be beat.)

Alternative: Ship your gun and baggage home instead of the meat. This is MUCH cheaper than shipping meat.

This way you can carry the trimmed hindquarters and the backstrap bagged in plastic and wrapped in newspaper, then boxed in the proper size boxes. If it's chilled down good when you start, it will be fine at the end of your 4 to 6 hours of flying. So long as your baggage is less than 50 lbs per "bag" and doesn't contain hazardous material, you can take three checked "bags" with you for free. One hundred and fifty pounds isn't all of an elk by any means, but it's all of the best parts. Tip your guide with the ribs and a forequarter.

By the way, shipping your dirty clothes home is an old savvy traveler's trick that lots of oversees travel veterans use so that they can bring their purchases and trinkets home on the cheap.

Lots of great info, very much appreciated. To answer Stonecreek, the reason I would fly in and drive back is to avoid being away from work for the extra two days, and also to get the meat actually processed by my local guy for some sausages and other stuff besides the cuts packaged. If I do the processing locally it could take additional time/days I may not have.

So thanks again for all the info. I am inclined to do more research about the local processing capabilities and see if air freight is a possibility. If I got an elk early enough I might be able to fly home with it and ship my clothes as others have suggested. Otherwise I'm still thinking of driving back with a couple 100 quart coolers and having it processed at home.

Has anyone actually used a processor in Albuquerque or El Paso. Also by my map El Paso looks much closer to Alamogordo, like 100 miles.

thanks,

Sean

Yes, El Paso would be a better choice if you're coming down from the mountains through Alamo. There's a guy here in Las Cruces (about 50 miles north of El Paso) that has processed a number of my hunting partner's game animals with pretty decent results. I can't comment directly as I do all my own meat handling. Just don't trust anyone else... Incidentally, this guy can usually process a whole game animal, including ground meat, in a day with advance notice.

You could always leave it with me and I'll send it with my in-laws at Thanksgiving. I would, of course, charge a flat storage rate of one package per week.

By the way, good luck on the hunt. At least you drew a tag, I didn't even get that this year.

I put a bull elk and a mule deer in the back of a rental car last fall. We lined the trunk (Ford 500) with plastic and 1-1/2" styrofoam (pink board). Then layed the quarters and other meat (all wrapped in burlap) in the makeshift cooler, along with some dry ice. The meat was perfect after a 1,700 mile drive. In fact, the local meat processer said it was the cleanest elk meat he's seen in years. By lining the trunk you can get more meat in, because you can (more or less) contour the "cooler" to the shape of the trunk.

BTW, according to the gps, the Ford 500 hit a top speed of 105 Mph on the way home. Also, when I returned the rental car, I told the girl at the counter that I took it elk hunting, 1700 miles away, she thought I was joking. Then she got the odomoter reading.

I hunted East Moreno ranch in north NM several times....driving back to GA with coolers full of meat iced down was cheapest by far. However, this past time we flew back and had NO problems whatsoever either. I cut up my elk and bagged it up in ziplock bags, froze it and bought a 52 quart Igloo cooler in Albuquerque and stuffed it in. I only kept the choice cuts and donated the rest to a hunters for the hungry program up there. Anyway, the baggage handler at Albuquerque told me that it was no big deal to take on the jet as extra baggage, up to 100# was a hundred bucks, 101-150 was higher and so on. My cooler weighed exactly 99#, so it cost me one Ben Franklin to get that meat home....no big deal and it was frozen solid getting back that night to south Ga. I took extra time to strap it up tight so it would not spring open during flight. No big deal...

Good luck this fall!!!! Lord I wish I was going this fall but I will have to wait till next year.

In some states, such as here, not every meat processor does wild game. State laws don't allow them to mix domestic with wild. So the precessors here pretty much shut down on domestic during hunting season and do wild game for several weeks.

Most of the time, when a nonresident drops off meat,. and can wait around two or three days he will possibly get his game, if you drop it off the day you need to leave, you will not likely get your own meat. Most, almost all, rotate wild game. Meaning they have one to start with then just rotate the next animal in.

Now if you just want to take quarterd game home that isn't to hard. Do like some of the other guys said, buy some large foam chests, pack with ice and blankets. Then periodically stop and re-ice. I used large heavey duty, industrial bags to bring a moose home from B.C. Filled it with meat and ice and when I got gas I got more ice.

A friend of mine used to haul for the whole hunting party. He'd tow a flatbed behind his dually that had a generator and two or three chest freezers on it. He'd get them down to temp at home, run the generator, a portable table was set up and a couple guys that cut meat for a major chain cut and wrapped it. All animals were tucked in the freezers for the trip home. They could cut and wrap an animal in no-time flat.

I agree with Joe Mack, I know quite a few guys that do the freezer in the pick up thing..Plug it in at night at the motel. They have never had anything even soften up during the day. You could do the generator thing if you were worried on it was very hot.. Make sure you duct tape the door to hold it shut and prevent air leakage.

Much more efficient than a generator is simply an inverter to convert 12VDC to 120VAC. A 400 watt model will run your typical chest-type freezer, but check the amperage (wattage) draw of your freezer and match the inverter to it.

We have a permanent camp where we run a 10 Cu Ft fridge for a week with just an auto-type 12V battery connected through an inverter.

Best of luck on the hunt Sean.

I want to see some pictures when you get back.

Great hunting with great hunters,

Kyler

There is an excellent shop in Chama, NM that will butcher your elk however you wish. It's been a couple of years but I believe they charged about $200. They will ship it for you if you wish.

quote:

Originally posted by Sean Browne:

Am hunting Elk in New Mexico first week in October near Alamogordo. I absolutely have to bring back the meat and am curious what my options are.

I drive if it's only a couple of days, just not worth the hassle of airline baggage. Things are different now, they are making people put laptops in the checked baggage, which I will never do.

Many places sell dry ice, and I can haul 100 pounds of meat in an 80-quart Coleman cooler ( about one deer and one antelope ). The cooler evaporates about two pounds of dry ice a day, at one or two dollars a pound. Smith's supermarkets ( Utah ) sell dry ice, and I doubt they're the only ones. Get it cut, wrapped, and frozen where you hunt, then pack it in coolers with dry ice and drive home.

I think the rules I saw prohibited bones, brains, and spinal parts in the meat you bring back to California. It would be worth a call to the game warden in your neighborhood.

You can't bring the head brains back must cut the skull cap and clean out, you can bring back spine t-bone steaks) back to Calif. if it's processed by a lic. meat packer. if not it must be boned out.