LAST EDITED ON Dec-15-13 AT 07:09PM (MST)[p]Mark,
We recently drove up to BC to hunt moose near Burns Lake, BC. I live in Salt Lake and I got all of the meat home that we brought out on the float plane. All of the meat fit into two 150 quart igloo coolers. You have to cut the bone a bit to make the quarters fit but it wasn't bad at all. It was a very simple process actually. Since there were two of us, it was cheaper to drive by quite a bit. It added two days of additional travel time but that didn't matter to us.
To get moose meat across the border is relatively simple. All you need is your tag and the outfitters declaration. I don't recall the exact name of the form but it allows you to transport the moose meat and antlers throughout BC and proves you actually used a guide for your hunt. The meat does not need to be deboned or anything like that. I do suggest having the antlers cut off the skull and only have the antlers and skull plate. My understanding is it is not necessary to have it cut off for the border but you could definitely run into problems in some states because of Chronic Wasting Disease so that's why I suggest having it cut off.
I am not as certain on what the process is to get other animals across, such as bear, sheep, etc. I know some meat is not allowed at all but any ungulate is just fine.
Shipping meat is really expensive and I do not think it's practical at all. If I were to fly, I'd only bring back at tops 50 pounds. Using a third party shipper or the airlines will be just as expensive. The antlers will add an enormous cost as well. Driving that far sucks bad but the cost savings was substantial.
As for recommendations on an outfitter, that would depend on what you want to spend. In my research, there were a couple high end outfitters that always came up in the discussion as they are supposed to be top notch. Check out Stone Mountain Outfitters, Lancaster Family outfitters, or Gundahoo Outfitters.
We didn't have the big money to go with the far northern Canadian Moose so we had to cut back on our cost. We ended up going with Nanika Lake Outfitters and I couldn't say enough good things about them.
If you need any additional info on what we ran I to, what to expect, etc just let me know and I'll give you whatever info I can.