Im looking at getting a new freezer soon and i was just wondering about how many cu. ft your freezer is and how many deer/other items you can fit in there. Also is it and upright or chest? Thanks in advance guys!
i'll go home and take a pic of mine for you... not sure the exact cu ft though... one full stand up one in the garage: holds my meat: 2 bucks, 2 doe 15lbs elk, 10lbs bear, 10 phesants, 2 gallon zip-locks panfish, 7 gallon zip locks salmon and 20 goose breasts. this includes D34's venison along with my buddy's for a night or two until they can get to my house to pick it up from the processor's one half fridge/freezer upright in the kitchen: vodka, any fries/hasbrowns, pizzas any meat that im gonna cook for the week comes out of the big freezer in the garage to the kitchen one one half upright fridge/freezer in the garage; mostly just for beer new so i dont really have anything in the freezer yet you can imagine the kitchen... just like the stainless steel one and the one off in the distance is the all freezer upright, as big as the fridge/freezer combo
We have two, an 8 cu ft upright and a 15 cu ft chest. If you don't go in and out of the freezer much an upright will work out OK but if you use it for a lot then I would get a chest freezer. Uprights can be organized better but all the cold air "falls out" when you open the door and the freezer needs to get the new air back to temp whereas a chest freezer keeps the air inside when the lid is open but you tend to stack things on top of things and They can be a little more of a challenge to organize. If you are looking at just putting a deer and a few other things in there an 8 cu ft will be fine. If you think you may use it more and more as time goes on then something bigger may be called for.
i have an upright and a large chest freezer in the pantry (not sure of the cubic capacity, but its prob like 15 ft). then in the kitchen we have a pull-out freezer below the fridge
smaller chest type. They are easier to rotate your meat. Nothing like find 3 yr old meat in the bottom of you freezer. I own 2!
My old boss had a cooler box off of beer distributors truck it held 12 - 15 deer He had a lot of friends
I have one big upright freezer. One 5.5 cubic ft chest freezer and 3 chest freezers that are between 7 and 10 cubic feet. Also two refrigerators with freezers on top. I recommend at least a 7 cubic ft chest freezer. I think you could easily fit 3 or 4 deer in a 7 c. ft freezer. Smaller and it get too filled, which makes it hard to get to the stuff on the bottom. 'Course if you get a giant chest freezer and fill it to the top, you'll really have a hard time rooting around in there. I would avoid the kind of freezer that has a separate drawer on the bottom. My 5.5 cubic ft one has a drawer on the bottom and it sucks. Badly. Uprights are good if you want to be organized but they use more energy if you open them much and it's harder to cram something big in one. (like a big turkey)
Thanks guys for the advice. This gives me a good idea of what i'm going to be looking for i really appreciate it!
I have a 14 cu ft. chest freezer. It is big enough for a half an Angus beef cow and a few deer (have never had more than 2 in addition to the beef). When the beef comes back from the packer in November, and the deer are cut up and frozen, it is pretty full, (when you add in the other stuff the wife buys). Once we get it eaten down to where it will all fit in the top freezer on my beer fridge (usually about now), we defrost the freezer and get ready for the new batch. Looks like I've still got some eating to do this year, though!
I have a bigger chest freezer & a 7.5 cu ft upright. I would go upright all the way. Too much get's "lost" at the bottom of the chest.
I have acatually been looking for one for awhile now. Hope to pick one up in the next few weeks. Think I am going to go with the chest style.
Can't really speak for an upright - I have never had one, but my wife once unplugged the chest deep freeze when we had about a quarter of beef in it (about 160 pounds or so - about a quarter full. She wanted to use the shop vac, and forgot to plug the freezer back in. It was like that for 2 days before I found it. Meat was still frozen, except for a couple of packages of steaks and ground beef on the edge, which were less than half thawed. After that we had steaks that night, and chili the next night, I got an alarm thermometer to let me know if it happened again, and I put in another couple of outlets in the garage.
