Freezing Meat and Flying Home

My wife and I drew some pronghorn doe tags in Wyoming. We are still fairly new to hunting and this will be our first western hunt. We are planning to fly to Denver, rent a car, and drive up from there.

I had a couple of ideas about getting the meat frozen for the flight home and wanted to run it by you guys:

Option 1 - Find a place in town to freeze the meat, put it in soft or hard coolers, and fly it as luggage. I’m not sure how easy it is to find someone who will just let you use their freezer though.

Option 2 - Buy a styrofoam cooler or two and fill them with dry ice. Use those to freeze my meat on my own. Before flying out, discard the dry ice and duct tape the coolers for the flight. I’m worried how the foam coolers would hold up to air travel.

Option 3 - Similar to #2 above using dry ice to freeze the meat in the foam coolers, but then take the frozen meat and put it in some Yeti Hopper soft coolers. The downside is I would likely need to buy a second one.

If you have some other good ideas, I'm open to those as well.

Thanks

I recommend hard or hopper type coolers. Have flown quite a bit of meat home from Hawaii and new Mexico.

We ran short on coolers on a small island with very limited options once and had to use styrofoam coolers in cardboard boxes. They arrived at our final destination in pieces...luckily all of our most was accounted for and still frozen.

I'd suggest sticking with a hard sided cooler. I've tried taking frozen meat in a Yeti Hopper up to my parent's place multiple times, hoping it would still be frozen when we got there. We've always gotten the meat there safely while it's still cold, but always manages to thaw out by the time we get off the plane and back to their place. Hoppers are great for a picnic or icing down a sixer for the end of the day, but if you're going to try and keep frozen things frozen stick to a hard sided cooler.

Flying back from Alaska we put frozen meat in plastic bags into our dry bags with our hunting clothes packed around it to get out of the Bush. It didn’t thaw at all by the time we got to town that night. Then we bought a Rubbermaid tote and packed all the meat in there for the flight back to Montana, and checked it. It was still mostly frozen after the all day flight back and the long drive home the next day. Granted, this was November. Don’t use styrofoam...it likely won’t survive the luggage handling. Also, check your airline regulations on dry ice. There are restrictions for flying with it. Usually they prefer you use blue ice (ice packs). No wet ice...if your package is leaking, they will toss it.

If you are staying in a hotel, call and ask if they have freezer space available for meat. Some of these rural hotels that get a lot of hunter business are set up for their needs.

Unless the airlines have changed their policy, you should be able to travel with checked luggage containing dry ice. I have sent both fish and game home with family members who flew with hard sided coolers and we always put a small chunk of dry ice and never had a problem. Give your airlines a call as the dry ice is a nice insurance policy in case of flight delays or a luggage mix up.

Thanks for the suggestions. Looks like flying with the styrofoam is out. I may still get one just to hold the dry ice all in one spot while we are in the field. I’m flying Southwest and they allow for up to 5.5 lb of dry ice per package. We are planning to camp, but may hotel it the last night to get clean before the return flight.