Free: Contests & Raffles.
This will likely sound funny, but since the August openers, I still don't hunt them until September. That is bad enough. A bad hornet or yellow jacket year is a real pisser. Better have a Benadryl in your pack and if you have the notion, an epi pen. Gotta get the hide off and a lot of the times the bones out. We typically will sink em in a creek in bags to drop the temp. I suppose its funny as typically you want to air circulate and plastic bags would be a huge no no, but I found the cold from the creek offsets that, and keeping them dry is a safer bet from spoilage than just sinking them in water.
I’ve lost meat twice both had to do with water. A moose shoulder from Alaska, we accidentally dumped it into a beaver pond when we were bringing it out. It was the only meat that spoiled. Another was an elk quarter on ice, we put the meat in plastic and packed in ice and drove from New Mexico overnight. We did one without the plastic, and it spoiled. Anecdotal at best but what we experienced. I’m with you though. You have to make choices with what options you have.
There are a lot of folks that have debunked the theory that getting you meat wet is bad. If that was my only option, I wouldn’t hesitate to drop it in the creek. My only debate would be, hide or hide off??