The Maiden Voyage

It was a crisp winter morning, the day had finally arrived. What had been a dream for many years was finally a reality. The kids were hyped up and settling in the car while mom and uncle were conducting a last minute luggage check. Our hunting pup hopped into her spot and all that was left to do was double check the trailer. Not our normal run of the mill trailer we had used every other hunting season, but our very own custom built refrigerated trailer.

This trip was meant to be a men’s getaway for a few days, followed by a quick trip home to offload meat and return to take our daughter on her first hunt. As providence would have it- it turned into an eight day family trip between two farms in Limpopo, the perfect opportunity for us to test this new vehicle out.

Let us rewind a little here before we continue and fill in the gaps on the birth of Venilicious. We are a family run business: husband, wife and brother-in-law. Hunting was a feature in our household growing up while the bug bit later for Hubbie. While hunting is seen as a men’s only sport, my husband wanted to include our kids as much as possible and breaking away from the traditional men’s only getaways he started searching for farms that could accommodate young children.

Taking multiple young children on a hunting trip brought about many challenges, but the biggest we found was getting out on the road early enough to ensure that your harvest was cold by the time you got back home to deliver to your processor of choice. The trip that called us into action was a trip to the Karoo in 2023. With frozen 2litre bottles stuffed in the rib cages of the carcasses, we realised how close we had come to possibly loosing our harvest. Being a refrigeration man, my husband’s cogs started turning and Venilicious was born.

That brings us back to our maiden voyage…

Upon leaving our first farm, we simply plugged in the trailer- to bring it down to temperature and loaded the harvest. While we packed the car, the meat was able to remain cold in the freezer, waiting for us to move onto our next destination. When it was time to go, we ensured the inside temperature was sufficient on the digital temperature gauge and off we went.

In town we stopped to grab some new supplies for the second stretch of the journey, stretched legs, changed nappies and when we were ready, we hopped back on the road. It was a different sort of stop not needing to worry about the temperature of the meat and how long we were taking to get all our ducks in a row.

Arriving at the second farm, we were delighted to find the meat at fridge temperature. We pulled out the extensions cords, plugged the fridge in and got the meat hung. Then it was time to enjoy the second part of the hunt.

One morning I thought I’d check the temperature and slight panic occurred as I was reading the gauge as 18 degrees and not 1.8 degrees. What a relief that I had been wrong.

After 3 days of bliss, it was time to get ourselves ready for the trip home. The carcass bag was given a quick rinse to rid of any blood which had dripped and the meat was laid back in the bag and sealed. We did need to pack some luggage in the trailer and once we had done so, it was sealed and left to drop to the optimum temperature. As we had done a few days prior, when we were ready, we unplugged and hit the road. Once back in Johannesburg, we went to our processor, dropped off the meat and headed back home.

What a lovely opportunity this trip was, we learnt lessons on aerodynamics and fuel consumption, tested the weight capacity on our meat rails and were at peace when it took us five hours to move between farms. We have some changes that we plan to implement so watch this space….