Summer venison is excellent meat. We have numerous areas here in Michigan where the agricultural interests are overrun with crop munchers. The DNR is good, for the most part, about issuing permits to thin the herd. Some folks even go through the process of getting them! The chunk-up-and-ice-asap method works well, the asap part being the most critical aspect of the whole exercise. I had to do that with the last bear I shot 3 years ago. It was 87 degrees when the bear was shot, so as soon as possible after tagging it I ran home with it packed with ice. Then I had a wrench tossed into my plan.....my Bride was rushed to the hospital by ambulance within a short while of my arriving back to the house! I put the bear into an OSB/foam board "meat box" I'd made years ago when I was elk hunting Colorado on a regular basis. It was approx. 4 ft by 5 ft and about 2 feet tall. I packed numerous bags of ice all around the bear and then, on account of being at the hospital with my Bride, I didn't get to skin and chunk up the beast for 2-3 days or so. After that the skin was frozen, and I put the chunks of meat in a huge (90 qt?) cooler and made sure there was cube ice all over and under the meat. It was a few more days before the meat was cut up and in the freezer. One thing I did, other than adding ice a time or two, was opening the drain plug and propping the cooler up so the meat wasn't soaking in ice water. The bear was a medium sized one....dressed at just over 160. A bigger beast would just take more ice. That same meat box held the quarters of my Michigan elk last year during more hot weather. It was shot at dawn, immediately skinned and chunked and iced down good. That was on a Tuesday. Wednesday I checked the ice (it was still full). Thursday and Friday my All Purpose Boy and I cut and packaged meat and we put the packages back inside the meat box on ice. Saturday I ground the burger and packaged it all before freezing the whole elk. I still had plenty of ice left in the box at that time, and the whole time, from tagging the bull, to freezing the packaged meat, was hot weather.
