Aging Venison....Continued

~Stinger with quartered venison, packed in a heavy duty cooler for 24 additional hours of aging

Last night Stinger and I made the 45 minute trip out to the cabin to pull his deer down from it's hanging spot in the barn. We essentially quartered it, wrapped the individual slabs in cheese cloth and put them in a very large and heavily insulated cooler for transportation back to the house. After thinking things over, we decided to leave the aging venison outside overnight in the cooler, but inside the screened-in deck. Since the temperature between now and morning is expected to stay between the current 36 and down into the mid 20's, I left the lid open to allow the meat to get even colder and closed it early this morning. I put some bagged ice inside the cooler then covered it up with several large towels for good measure. I placed it so it won't be in the sun during the day. All this combined should keep the inside temp in the desired range. I'm guessing that this morning the meat was likely about the same temperature as the air around it. Keeping it inside the closed cooler all day, will likely keep the temperature of the meat below 40 and maybe well below. 

We're not experts on this stuff, but then keeping meat cold doesn't seem like rocket science to Stinger and me. It's my estimation that from the time we field dressed the deer Saturday morning, skinned it out and hung it in the barn, the temperature of the meat has stayed in the range of the low 30's to no more than about 40 degrees or so. All the seemingly credible information we've read on the subject suggest that keeping the meat below the range of the low 40's should allow it to cure with no issue of spoiling, and that makes sense to us Goomers. Since this is our first effort with processing our own deer, we're not nearly as concerned this go-around with achieving the absolute best tasting venison possible, as we are with not dying. As a result, our primary attention has been on handling the deer in as sanitary a fashion as feasible while keeping the meat at a low temperature for as long as possible before final processing and packing. We think we're on the right path so far and feel pretty good about our efforts and the operation overall. 

With that, we plan to continue on with the deer "home-processing project" and of course...I'll keep you posted.