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For a 12 day trip, I am looking at dry ice as a means to keep my perishables cold longer. My ice chests are 5 day Coleman Extreme's (70qt), (3 of them). I need to turn the 5 day into 10 days. I will be freezing pre-cooked meals for 10 days prior to the hunt, hopefully getting them good and solid, which should act as ICE as well.
I am looking for the pro's and cons of working with dry ice and tips to help keep longer... I'll be hunting where it could be as high as 80-85' in the afternoon peak. 2 hunters.
when i was younger dry ice would last and last todays dry ice sucs they had to have changed it !
Dry ice will keep things frozen for days. I usually will wrap up items in several layers of old newspaper. Dry ice will also make your can drinks explode. Just my experience.
I spent years packing biologicals for shipping with dry ice. To make your dry ice last longer, don't use crushed ice if you can get the slabs. Take meat wraping paper and wrap the ice, then do it again. Don't do it once with two sheets of paper, but use two sheets of paper and wrap it two times.....
Also put cardboard in the bottom of your ice chest to keep them from cracking. We shipped containers to Belgium and had them send rabbit brains back to us. That's how I instructed them to ship. I spent 29 years in the rabbit industry and shipped bio's all over the world, using dry ice.
When I go to Colorado, I put dry ice in the bottom of ice chest and then wet ice on top, frozen foods on top of that. Then we have wet ice for the duration of the hunt and the meat doesn't get freezer burn....
Yep, wrap it or use cardboard to keep items from burning, keep it out of water....and amybe duct tape one cooler and only open it when you need it.
Those 5 day coolers are very good....if you don't open them all the time. We have had block ice last a week in those.
My dry ice did not last long at all. It was slabbed wrapped in a paper bag inside of a thick medical supply styrofoam cooler that I duct taped the edges and then stuck into my 76qt igloo cooler and put it in the shade. I shot my elk within a week and when I opened the styro cooler nothing was left.
To the guys who make it last, how many pounds of dry ice do you get?
Wrapping the cooler with an old sleeping bag will help, but dry ice still evaporates. Five days is about the best I can get.
Never used it to keep ice longer, but used several times to get stuff frozen before flying home.
For that it's reverse order, meat on the bottom, layer of cardboard or paper, dry ice, another layer of cardboard, meat, cardboard, dry ice.... repeat as necessary making sure your last layer is dry ice. Will freeze the meat solid in 3 or 4 hours if you have enough dry ice. If you are wrapping it you can wrap first but it takes a bit longer to freeze. Faster if you wrap it later. Either way it works pretty good if you can't beg, barrow, or steal a freezer somewhere.
Main theme, as stated above, is using dry paper (I like cardboard as newspaper etc. can stick to the meat) making sure the dry ice doesn't touch any meat. Take special care it doesn't touch any of YOUR flesh. Burns the crap out of it too. Your skin can stick to it as well. See: the flagpole scene from A Christmas Story.....
Put it across the top of the cooler underneath the lid and sit it on a layer of newspaper. I did this with Elk meat That was not frozen or refrigerated before a drive across country with coolers in the back of the truck. When I got home 3 days later, the Meat was frozen.
Make sure you don't drive with it in an enclosed vehicle.
What TD said..... My first real experience with dry ice came at the hands of my boss. We decided to see who was the toughest, by taking a small block and putting it between our hands in a handshake. He jerked his hand back first... but we both lost. Until he died (years later) his hands cracked open and were severely sore all winter every winter afterward.
Also, I was working in a room with about 2,500 pounds of ice packing shipments one night with a co-worker, and we both about got asphexiated.....
i can get frozen 2 gallon water containers to last a week if you wrap them in news paper. add in some dry ice under them and they will last longer.
GDX Thanks and good tip... Thanks to the group for the ideas on this topic.
I watched this on YouTube. He got 3-1/2 days out of his dry ice. He had days in the 90-100 degree range.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAOdMvEmis8
Block ice with dry slab on top. Don't open the cooler more than absolutely necessary. Make a duct tape gasket. Cover the coolers with blanket and keep in best all day shade you can find.
What Jaquomo said. Once you close the lids and tape the seam between the lid and bottom all the way around... wrap them in a sleeping bag and put one on top. Makes a huge difference.
One time I drove several coolers of whole quarters and dry ice home in the bed of the truck. One had a wall tent on top the others did not. The ones without were nice and cold but just partially frozen and all the ice was gone. The one with the tent on top still had ice in it and the meat was frozen solid.
Everyone in my camp uses those 5 day coleman coolers and I usually still have ice after 10 days on the mountain. I use blocks as opposed to cube and have one cooler for drinks and another for food. If I need ice for a drink or something I chip it off a block. The drink cooler might be out of ice by the end of the hunt, only because that cooler is opened and closed a lot. Keep the coolers out of the sun and in the shade and they keep ice a lot longer than 5 days...I also vacuum seal all my meals so they will stay fresh even after thawing for quite some time if kept cold.
I have the same coolers and shipped 3 unfrozen deer and several hogs in 2 Coleman Extremes via UPS. Took 4 days to get to me and by the time they did everything was rock frozen and there was still dry ice that would probably last a few more days or so.
That was 300lbs of meat.
So it should be able to last a while. Like others said keep lids closed and seal shut with RATCHET straps.
You should be good.
