You can age game as long as you want. If you want to avoid becoming sick from eating bacteria that grows on food, your food needs to be kept below 40 degrees or above 140 degrees. Between those two temperatures, you have 4 hours of "safe" handling time, after which your chances of getting foodborne illness go up statistically and rapidly.

4 hours is cumulative time. That means if your meat sits out for 2 hours before refrigeration, and you take it out and leave it on the counter another 2 hrs, while you would be best to continue to refrigerate it, the damage is already done.

You might want to look into dry ice.

Get a brute box cooler. About $100 cheaper than yeti and better insulated. Used one at the coast fishing all last week. With one pack of dry ice in the bottom I had to break up the ice on top every time I opened it to get something out or put more fillets in. Kept it in the back of the truck the whole time. Worth every penny.

Be careful when using this method. Can easily result in broken/cracked coolers. Must insulate dry ice from cooler's internal walls.

No problem with a Yeti and dry ice. I'm sure as well with the other roto molded coolers, but I'd check first.


Who needs a Yeti?

I use the dry ice in my Engels and Yetis for long trips and works great. They are both rated for dry ice, most cheaper coolers are not.

Only reason why I put the warning about dry ice in a cooler is because my old rockwood popup camper had an "ice box" rather than a fridge. ONE time we forgot to put the towels down between the bottom of it and the dry ice we would use to keep it cold for a week of camping. It was FUBAR after that until I could JB-weld it back up.

Use block ice it will last longer than crushed ice. If you have big enough cooler, freeze 3 liter soft drink bottle, if not freeze 2 liter bottles. Next use at least 2 coolers, one that you open for and close during the day, the other one keep it closed, do not open unless you have to. In the "do not open" cooler keep your extra ice bottles, these ice bottles will last longer if you keep the cooler closed.

Before we got electric put in on our place we had one cooler for drinks, one for food, and one for extra frozen 2 liter bottles. If people kept the coolers closed and done everything right we had plenty of ice. With kids, it was hit and miss, they would be opening and closing the drink and food coolers all day and night and we would run out of ice.

Last thing, a few hours before you leave take extra frozen bottle and cool down the coolers. That can make a big difference.

Yeah dry ice can kill a cheap cooler but you can put it right down on a roto molded cooler and be fine...at least that's what they tell you. I've only used dry ice once and I had no issues other than damn near burning my hand on it a couple times when I was loading it in.