Upright freezer or chest freezer?

Upright or chest freezer?

  • Upright

    Votes: 26 47.3%

  • Chest

    Votes: 12 21.8%

  • Both

    Votes: 14 25.5%

  • Neither I stopped hunting because of 90/10 in WY

    Votes: 3 5.5%
  • Total voters
    55
  • Poll closed .
SS!

SS!

Long Time Member
Messages
9,128
Cleaning out the freezers prepping for killing season and was wondering what everyone’s preference in freezers. Currently I have two chest freezers that I keep the bulk of everything in and then I cycle the contents over to the upright freezer.
 
Chests are great for long term storage, and lots of larger items for taxidermy (capes, and skulls). They are nice because you don't lose all the cold air out of them like an upright if they are opened quite a bit, or if your kids/Gkids don't close doors properly!! They are kind of a pain when crap gets cycled to the bottom and you forget about what is there. My wife is in and out of our upright in the garage multiple times a day; I can't get her to bring in several days worth at a time, and leave in the kitchen freezer!!
 
When I get one it will be an upright. Until then my wife salts, smokes, dries, and cans all our meat and fish. She's kind of stuck in the past. She's out cutting Alder wood right now in fact. She likes the crosscut saw I bought her at a garage sale a couple months ago. She'll like it better once she gets the hang of sharpening it. She wants to buy a turkey for Thanksgiving this year. I told her to quit watching so much television, it's poisoning her mind.
 
I'm an upright type of guy. We had a chest type many, many years ago. Never failed, the stuff I wanted was always on the bottom. Since then we have gone through one upright that lasted more than 20 years, and we've been on the 2nd for about a decade now. We also use TWO large side-by-side refrigerators. Right now all the freezers are plum stuffed, yet there are only the two of us & no wild game involved. :rolleyes:

Eel, you need to get your bride cooking on a wood fire, too. None of that sissy gas or electric crap.
 
You Can't Tamp an UpRight!

The Guy In Wyoming that Hid the Dead Wolf Several Years ago Had a Chest Freezer!

The Only Thing I Know For Sure is:

You Will Have a few Freezer's Kick Your Ass A Few Times in Your Life When They Go Out & You Lose all your Meat!
 
Both a chest and upright for me. The shelves in my upright can’t handle heavy boxes of meat, quarters, and bulky taxidermy items.

I use the upright for ducks, steaks, burger, and other packaged items but I hate it when you open the door and the stacked up piles of frozen packages start falling off the shelves. Easier to use all of the chest freezer space than the upright for this reason…

Horniac
 
I had 2 upright freezers for many years. One nice thing about newer uprights is some of them have defrost so you don't have to continually thaw out all the ice. My upright that didn't have defrost I'm getting rid of. Ice built up in the door and I often didn't know that the door opened until I started smelling it!

None of the chest freezers I've looked at have defrosters so if there is ice built up you are faced with thawing it out and melting the ice. This may or may not happen very often depending upon the conditions and your freezer.

I just bought a GE chest freezer that is only a few months old on Craigslist for almost 1/2 price. It is designed for garages that have extreme temperature variations. It claims that it only costs around $35/year for electricity.

I always have a couple freezers for capes and meat. I often have several capes, turkeys, fish, etc in my freezer every year. It's nice having enough freezer space that I can freeze entire turkeys until I have time to cape them or place an entire boned deer, elk, or antelope in when the temperatures are super warm and I don't have time to process the meat. I've also placed entire salmon and large trout in the freezer until I have time to skin them. Everyone is a little different but it's sure nice to have lots of space. I'm constantly battling enough room for large items with the uprights I've had and that's the reason I just bought a chest freezer.

Horniac makes a great point, If you have room it may be nice to have both an upright for smaller items and chest freezer for big stuff?
 
I just had a new one delivered last weekend that replaced our much smaller chest freezer. I’m hoping to fill this bad boy by the end of hunting season.
F70EBA6F-48B1-449C-BFDE-7506ADA0757E.jpeg
 
treedagain said:
When you fill the freezer like I do, hard to find the time to cut/wrap myself. If I was just vacuum sealing.a couple fish it might be different? 1????
Click to expand...
Hahaha nice! I always knew you let other guys touch your meat! Those 3 year old rams must have more meat than I thought ??
 
I’m in Oakland for work & before jumping on MM & reading through this thread I wasn’t too happy to be here. Now that I had a few really good laughs, I’m in a much better mood. ??
 
We have a chest freezer and I'm lucky, my wife is the freezer police. She is very good at rotating and keeping things separate by species and date.
 
SS! said:
I’m no alpha hunter like @treedagain but you know you put up a lot of meat when you have a freezer or just hunter sticks hahahaha. Vac pack is the only way to go!View attachment 47459
Click to expand...
Nice!!! I make deer sausage every year around Christmas, but I never have a single stick left by the end of January. This last year I made some deer / antelope sausage & it was pretty darn good.
 
As mentioned by SS vacuum packing sure is nice. I bought a Cabelas brand a few years ago and it sure is nice. Your meat will likely last longer in the freezer if vacuum packed.
 
SS! said:
Treedagain and tikka would like my meat stick. They both would want more.
Click to expand...
That’s a problem a lot of guys have SS. Don’t feel bad… They always want more. Just let them know that they get the whole thing next time. Nobody needs to know it was all you had. ?
 

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