Ep. 3: High Desert Sheep Adventures and Better Hot Weather Meat Care
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For 15% off your first order, use code COUNTRY at checkout. Just visit markethouse.com. That's M-A-R-K-E-T-H-O-U-S-E dot com. And use the code COUNTRY. Outdoor adventure won't wait for engine problems. Things like hard starts, rough performance, and lost fuel economy are often caused by fuel gum and varnish buildup. Seafoam can help your engine run better and last longer. Simply pour a can in your gas tank.

Hunters and anglers rely on Seafoam to keep their engines running the way it should the entire season. Pick up a can of Seafoam today at your local auto parts store or visit seafoamworks.com to learn more. As a guide and hunter, I've spent thousands of days in the field. This show is about translating my hard-won experiences into tips and tactics that'll get you closer to your ultimate goal, success in the field. I'm Remy Warren. This is Cutting the Distance.

It's late August or early September and it's a hot day. You've been sweating through the heat and now have the opportunity for success. You're stoked. You just shot a buck. But now what? Hot weather hunting is just a fact of the matter in many places and especially for a lot of early season archery hunts. But what do you do with the meat on a hot day? Being successful is one thing, but you have to get that meat home safe.

I want to give you a rundown of the steps I take in hot weather hunts to make sure the meat goes home unspoiled. I want to tell you what I do right away, how to handle and cool meat when it's hot outside, as well as how to prepare a place for meat transport before you even leave the house.

I've been on a lot of hunts in a lot of really hot places, whether Australia, Hawaii, but one hunt in particular really stands out in my mind. It was early September near the Black Rock Desert of Nevada.

I'd drawn a California bighorn sheep tag. Now the Black Rock Desert, big flat, and then there's these volcanic type mountains around it. And those mountains during that time of year can get hot, over 100 degrees. The only saving grace is the temperature does drop in the evenings. So you can cool off. It's not hot nights. But during the middle of the day,

It is scorching. There is zero, absolutely zero shade. My plan for this hunt was I really wanted to find a good mature ram before the season started because I wanted to be there opening day. I had high hopes of taking a ram the beginning of the season, but putting in my time pre-season scouting. So I knew where all the sheep were and then I could go in the first day and start hunting.

My plan was about 10 days of scouting before the hunt actually started. So when I left, I had to be thinking of getting that meat home. So I scouted for 10 days and then opening day comes around. I had a good ram picked out. I actually had a different ram picked out, but some other people moved in on that sheep and I really wanted a good experience as well. So I decided to go after sheep.

Some sheep in an area that I knew no one else would go into. Well, that's kind of problematic because that put me further and further from the truck. As the sun came up, I was a few miles from the trailhead and spotted a good ram. The ram that I wanted, actually.

Now, the way the crow flies, he was probably, I would say, six miles from the truck and a lot of elevation, descent, and gain in order to get back. It was not an easy place to get to, but I found what I wanted. I found the ram I was looking for, and I found some solitude. However, the day was about the hottest day we'd had so far.

The lava type rocks were just absorbing the sun. I was literally just cooking. I felt like I was frying out there. I had one of those fishing buffs on just to keep the sun off my body. Sunglasses, tried to just cover up as much as I could. Long sleeves. I had to carry all my water. I had stashed water in this area beforehand.

However, the where I'd stashed the water was still a mile past the sheep. So I had no opportunity to actually get to my water stash. I end up making my way toward the ram and it's about midday at this point. Probably took me a good, I don't know, seven hours or more to hike in there. I got to where I last saw the ram and luckily he was still there. He popped up, but then he worked his way behind a set of rocks.

I was watching from maybe 800 yards out. This gave me an opportunity to drop down, cut the distance, and get to the ridge right across from him. As I got into the ridge, I was kind of expecting him to actually still be bedded there, but he popped up and started moving because as the day progressed, the shade got less and less, and I think he was actually just moving to a band of cliffs that still had a sliver of shade near him.

Just like anything else, man, that sun really beats down on these animals. So I happened to position myself in a spot where I intercepted him walking to this band of cliffs where he's probably going to bed down for the rest of the day. But I knew that I wouldn't be able to get a shot if he got in there. So as he was moving, I

I got set up. I was a couple hundred yards away, made a good shot and had the Ram of my dreams down. This tag took me 15 years to draw. So it was just a pretty exciting experience to now have the Ram. The only problem was it was freaking hot out. Now I'm getting toward the end of the day at this point, but the one thing on my mind was,

Now I got to get the meat out without it spoiling. Having grown up in the desert, you really get used to dealing with meat in hot weather. So it wasn't not necessarily different, but there were a few things working against me in this instance because there were absolutely zero trees. There is nothing to hang any meat from at first sight. Think, man, there's nothing, nowhere to hang this meat to cool it down.

So that's all going through my head. I got the RAM set up. I took a few quick photos, a little bit of video, but I really wanted to get working before things got too hot. So I did the same method that I do every time. Gutless method, skinned it up the back, started peeling the hide off to dump the heat, working from the hind quarter up,

Took off the hind quarter and then I had my game bags, hung it in a game bag, but I had the problem of where do I hang it? Well, I happen to have some P cord with me. I tied some P cord to the center of a small rock and then made a piton out of it where I could put it in the cracks of the cliffs and rocks around me in order to create almost like a clothesline that I could hang the meat from.

As the sun then started to move across the sky, that became shaded. Before that happened, I actually had a small tarp in my bag as well that I used to shade myself and create a shade structure that I also peed on to the rock. So while I was working, I was working in the shade.

Then I got all the meat off the animal, loaded it in my pack. At this point, it was perfect because the sun was just setting and I could do the majority of the pack out in the evening when the day cooled down. I packed it out. I ended up getting back to the truck at about 5 a.m. that morning. So it was a pretty long trudge back out, a lot more uphill on the way back out than the downhill on the way in.

But I got back, got to camp, got the meat cooled down on ice that actually had been sitting in these large Yeti coolers for about 10 days. Got the meat there. Well, I actually hung it before I put it in the cooler. And then the next day, loaded up camp, had the meat in the cooler, had a nice crust on it, drove back home. Meat was all good. And I had the ram of a lifetime.

I've been on a lot of hunts in really hot weather, and honestly, I've never lost an animal to heat spoilage. Now, there's probably a lot of ways that people take care of meat or different ways than myself, but this is just the way that I do it, and I really have no need to change my methods because I have had such a good track record with it. But first, I kind of got to talk about what heat spoilage is or why meat would go bad and how you can even tell if meat goes bad. Now, when meat sours...

It's pretty apparent based on the smell and coloration of it. What's happening is bacteria and microorganisms are essentially tainting the meat. They're growing rapidly, and heat is one of the factors that can cause that. Now, some other things are...

dirt. So if you're processing an animal in the field, dirt also plays a big factor in that. So if you have something that gets dirty and something that gets hot, well, you're really setting yourself up for disaster. Also, a lot of people don't realize, you know, moisture causes meat to go bad. Now, I found that for heat related meat spoilage,

Stuff that I've seen that other people have handled that has gone bad has been bone souring. So what's happening is heat's being trapped around the bone and then souring from the inside out. A lot of the tips that I'm going to talk about are just ways to prevent this. Even if it's hot out, there are things you can do to prevent your meat from spoiling. The first thing is, and the most important, is keeping the meat clean, cool, and dry.

I generally always use the gutless method. Now, some people might think, oh, it's hot out. I'm going to gut the animal first, dump the heat trapped by the body, which makes sense. Yet the way that I do it, I always think that the muscle groups that I'm taking are outside of that. So the hides trapping the meat. So my thought is get the hide off first because that allows it to cool the meat to cool down.

and start dropping temperature, also start drying out sooner rather than later. The key is getting air circulation around the quarters and the cuts that you take off the animal. As soon as you get it hung up and get that air circulating around it, it's going to cool down. The body temperature of that animal is already high. So the odds are that if you get air movement around

And circulation of air, even if the air temperature is fairly hot, if you're able to keep it out of direct sunlight and get that air moving around it, it's going to cool the meat down to a temperature below what it's already at. And that right there is the key to hot weather meat care.

So you got to think of bringing extra supplies if you know it's going to be hot out that allow you to get that meat into somewhere where you can hang it and cool it down. Now, if you've got trees around, right there is a given. So you got to think of things that you're going to bring. Well, you're going to want game bags, right?

Because another thing you got to worry about when it's hot is flies being attracted to the smell of whatever you shot. Flies lay their larva on the meat and then that contain it as well. You don't want a bunch of maggots getting in there. So I always bring like real high quality game bags when it's hot out, not the cheesecloth kind. I feel like there might be a place for those later in the season. They are lighter, but I bring them more.

i don't even know what you'd call it like pillowcase type game bags the ones i use are caribou gear game bags there's all different brands allen makes some they're similar just the real thick cloth but yet breathable so super durable but also breathable and allows the meat to cool down but keeps the flies off of it so you'll want the game bags you'll need something to hang it with like paracord that's what i use

And then you're going to have to also think about is where you're hunting, is there a possibility for shade? Is there trees? If not, a lot of times I'll bring a small either survival tarp if I want to go lightweight or even just a smaller tarp. The tarp can be used in two ways. It can be used to keep the animal off the ground as you're quartering it to prevent dirt from getting on it because you got to make sure it's extra clean when it's hot out. Another thing the tarp can be used for is creating a shade structure.

Even if there's no trees around, you can create a structure or a almost like a shade type umbrella based off of rocks around you. The way that I do that is I run P-cord to the corners with a rock in there to keep it from pulling out. And then I can tie a rock to the other end of the P-cord and then wedge it between rocks to get it to hang above me.

You know, you might create the shade structure right where you're processing the animal or to the place where you're hanging it if you can't find somewhere to hang it with shade. Just like that sheep hunt, you know, I used the P-cord to hang it in the shade of the rock itself. You'd be surprised at the places you can find shade even in the open.

The animals need it to survive. So it's probably around wherever you get something down. You just have to make use of what's around you. O'Reilly Auto Parts are in the business of keeping your car on the road. I love O'Reilly. In fact, the other day, I'm not kidding you. The other day, I went into an O'Reilly Auto Parts looking for a part. I needed a different thing that wasn't really in there, you know, only like tangentially related to what they carry.

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Go to fishingbooker.com today. That's fishingbooker.com. When I'm doing the gutless method, the first piece of meat that I take off is going to be the hindquarter. I feel like the hindquarter has the bulk of muscle and it traps the most heat. So the first thing I do is I run a cut up from the back all the way up the neck and start peeling off the hide on one side. So up the back leg, all the way up the back, and then start peeling from the hindquarter up.

I'll remove the hindquarter, hang it, then I'll take out the back strap and then go in for the tenderloin right away because that's going to be in a spot that you won't want to sit in the sun while you're processing the rest of it. The front shoulder, although it has a lot of bone to it, the majority of the meat sitting on top of the front shoulder. So I believe that it has a higher percentage of being able to cool down faster. But the next is that same side. Take off that front shoulder.

In between each step, I'm hanging everything with the bone in, but just getting it to initially cool down. I try to work as fast as possible. I then flip the animal over, work the other side, back quarter up to the front, up to the neck, hang that. Now, I talked about bone souring earlier. One thing that I will do if it's going to be a long pack out is I'll take the bone out to help cool the meat down right away. But this is once they're already hanging in a shaded spot.

Now you have to judge your next actions based on how much time it's going to take you to get back to the truck. If by the time you've quartered the whole animal out, it's starting to cool down, develop a nice crust and dry off, it may just be more sensible to pack it out now and then get it to your cooler. If it's going to be a longer trip in the middle of the day, you're going to want to take extra time while you've got it in the shade and ability to cool it down to help dump more heat by removing the bone.

So it's really situational. When I pack an animal back, I'm really cognizant of where I place the meat in my pack, as well as the time of day that I'm packing out.

If I know that I'm going to be going through a long stretch and it's going to be an all day pack, you might be better off waiting with it hanging in the shade where it's cooler, especially if you have a breeze, then to put it in your pack and start hiking out in the middle of the day. You might be smarter to wait till it gets dark in a lot of the places you hunt,

or more high alpine, it cools off in the evening. So it's a better option to just pack out in the evening or early in the morning if it cools down. If it doesn't cool down, then you're going to just have to get to the truck or wherever your cooler is as fast as possible.

Now, once the meat has cooled from hanging, or at least cooled down considerably from what it was, I'll put it in my pack. I'll leave it in the game bags, but I'll oftentimes line my pack with a garbage bag. I know what you're thinking. That plastic is going to trap the heat. It does. But you are not going to get enough breathability by just dropping it in your pack.

And what's going to happen is if you got multiple days, that pack's going to get bloody and then it's going to sit out and you're going to have problems with bacteria growing in the pack. So it's just way cleaner to put it inside of that bag, inside your pack. The reason you put it in your pack is because inside the pack creates shade. So the sun might be beating on the pack, but if you think about it, throw your lunch into the bottom of your backpack.

inside something that black bag will block out a lot of the heat and a lot of the direct sun which actually keeps it cooler so long as it's cooled down before you put it in I will also leave the top open so if there is residual heat in the meat it can vent out the top but I try to

plan my pack out by trying to avoid as much direct sunlight as possible. If I do happen to stop, I'll then open up the pack, open up the plastic bag and let it air out. As soon as I get to my vehicle, it comes out of that bag. It's only while I'm walking. So if I stop for a little bit and need to take a break, I'm going to hang the meat up again and allow it to continue to cool, hang it in the shade or whatever. When you get back to camp, that's where the crux of the whole operation comes into play.

This is the time where now you need to put the meat into something cold, which will be your cooler. The trouble might be is you may have left, in my case on that sheet pint, 10 days beforehand. So you need a cooler that isn't all water, that has ice still in it. And that's going to come from planning and the way that you pack your cooler before you leave.

It's important because I don't like to just drop the meat into, after it's been hot all day, drop it into a bunch of water. You're really going to just ask for trouble in that instance. So when I pack my cooler before I leave, there's a lot of things that I do. I'll take one cooler. If it's really hot out, I'll take one cooler that is the designated meat out cooler. That cooler is just ice sitting for the animal when I come back.

I'll use like a really high quality cooler. I use a Yeti cooler. I pack the bottom with block ice.

Then I make a lot of the block ice myself, just freezing large bottles or anything I can to make large pieces of ice. Those tend to melt slower. I also, before I pack that ice in my cooler, a few days beforehand, we'll just dump a bunch of ice in the cooler to pre-chill the cooler. The worst thing you can do is just drop ice into a hot cooler. So I pre-chill the cooler before I leave the house a few days beforehand with just ice that I'm actually just going to dump out.

because I don't want that water in there as well. Then once it's chilled, I'll put big blocks of ice in the bottom. I then fill that ice with crushed ice around it, trying to kill any airspace. I have freezer packs that are frozen. They actually freeze colder than water itself, which helps keep the ice frozen. So I'll put those on top of that. I'll put one more layer of ice. Some people mix in rock salt. I don't actually do that because I end up using dry ice a lot.

I'll put dry ice on top of that ice, but not touching the water. So I'll do like a layer of either just like a garbage bag layer or something. Try to keep it from touching or keep the dry ice in a plastic bag that came to you. If you're using dry ice and have the ability to use it,

You need to remember that the dry ice on top keeps things frozen. Dry ice on the bottom refrigerates. A lot of people make the mistake of lining the bottom of the cooler with dry ice. Then everything melts. The dry ice turns it into a cooler bomb because it can't vent. But in order to keep it frozen, dry ice on top. Then I kill the airspace by using...

some form of insulation like a garbage bag with just actually house insulation inside of it to kill any dead air space on top if the cooler is not completely full with ice. If you got too big of a cooler, whatever. Then I pack that, I lock it down, and I don't touch it. I don't open that cooler until I'm ready to put meat in it. And that's if you're going on long haul hot weather. The other thing is keep that cooler in the shade for the duration of the time that you're out there.

Because I've gone as long as two weeks with ice in the same cooler in 100 degree heat and had no problems. But it's all based on the way that I prep the cooler before I head into the field. If you don't take your time and prep it wrong, you'll probably lose that ice in a few days, even with a good cooler sometimes. Just leaving it out in the sun, putting ice in a hot cooler, it's not going to last.

So a lot of keeping your meat from spoiling in the field or on the way home is having a good place and a good source of cold ice when you get back to camp, no matter how long you've been out there. Now, let's say you're in a backcountry hunt and you just do not have the ability to get back to a base camp where there is ice right away. Maybe you're in Alaska early August, say caribou hunt, and a plane's not going to pick you up for a few days. What do you do?

Well, in those kinds of situations, a lot of times the places you're at will cool down at night. So you got to remember that. Even if it's hot in the middle of the day, you will probably have ample time to cool the meat by hanging it at night. Now, here's a few things that I've done

in those situations just to kind of keep the meat cool in the middle of the day if I didn't have good shade or good breeze. One of the things is, and I know a lot of people have done this, is put it in a cold water source. Now, here's the caveat to that. I will never stick meat into water, but I do often carry dry bags around.

So if I ever had to do that, and I've done it once and it worked okay, was I put meat in a dry bag, then I submerge the dry bag into a lake with a paracord. The hard part is it wants to float. So you got to press all the air out of the dry bag with the meat in it and then submerge it at the bottom of the lake. As long as that lake's cold, it should keep the meat cool. The one thing I will do though, if I do that,

is pull the meat out of the dry bag in the evening and then hang the meat so it can get air circulation and remain dry, not sweating in that airtight dry bag all day and all night. Another option, I've done this as well, is in the tundra, cut out pieces of moss and cover it in the middle of the day to create shade. And then in the evenings, create a clothesline system

where I can hang the meat or set the meat up off the ground to cool once the sun's gone down and the day cools off. This can be done even just by creating little teepees with sticks that you get other places.

a clothesline type system or just keeping it slightly off the ground building little racks just to get air circulation around it. That way it stays dry, it stays cool, and then you can bury it again and create that shade by digging a hole or whatever just to try to keep it out of direct sunlight during the middle of the day. I really think that you shouldn't let hot weather hinder your hunt.

I get the question all the time about hot weather meat care and people talking about, well, should I not hunt? Is it too hot out? You know, I think with a lot of pre-planning and thought to it and just getting the meat cool and off the animal right away,

You can hunt in pretty much any temperature. You just have to take extra steps to make sure that you'll be able to take care of that meat when you get it back to the truck or while you're in the field. And that might include bringing extra gear like the game bags, the paracord, having that cooler pre-prepped, as well as thinking outside the box a few ways to keep that meat cool.

There's other times where I'll be hunting and I might see something in the middle of the day, but I have ample opportunity to harvest and I'll just wait till it gets closer to the evening. So I'm working on it when I don't have to deal with the hot direct sun. There's a ton of workarounds when you're out in the field, but you shouldn't let hot weather dictate whether you hunt or not. Sometimes that's a great time to hunt and there's no other option. So with a little bit of pre-planning, you can make sure that your meat comes home unspoiled.

As always, I really appreciate you listening to this episode. You know, it'd be awesome if you could give us a good review, drop some good comments, give us a good rating. Yeah, next week, it's about that time of year, elk season is coming up. It is one of my favorite times of year because I love calling elk. Now, I have some pretty successful ways that I have learned to call elk, especially from guiding.

When your task is your job to call in elk for people day in and day out, you figure out little workarounds when the elk don't want to cooperate. So I don't know if these secrets have been divulged before, but I'm going to give you the best secrets for calling in elk, especially when they're being very difficult, when other people might say they're call shy. I'm going to debunk that myth of call shy elk and teach you how to be more successful when the elk don't want to cooperate.

So make sure to check that out. Feel free to, if you've enjoyed it, share this with your friends. And yeah, I appreciate you. Catch you next week.

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Market House has the cleanest, leanest, juiciest meat and seafood shipped to your home overnight. Expect the service of a local butcher and the convenience of a large supplier. Unlike many online butchers, you can grab just one meal's worth or lock in for a subscription box. Choose from grass-fed and grass-finished beef, American Wagyu, free-range poultry, grass-fed lamb, wild-caught king crab, seafood, and more.

and more. For 15% off your first order, use code COUNTRY at checkout. Just visit markethouse.com. That's M-A-R-K-E-T-H-O-U-S-E dot com. And use the code COUNTRY.