never tried bear meat

[S&W38spc]

Yep you read that right. Ive never tried bear meat. Does it taste like chicken  or does it have a game taste..

[Bigshooter]

I'm not a big fan of bear meat.  It is not chicken.    I can't think of anything to really compare it to.  I like it best cut thin marinated and grilled.  I've had it a few other ways but this was what I thought was best.  Not liking bear meat is what keeps me from bear hunting.  But I think that might change this year.

[Russ McDonald]

I have bear before.  Sausage, pan fried and stewed.  It is all in how it is prepaired and cooked.  I have had it were it is greasy and wasn't very good but that was only once.  Had some a couple months ago and it was slow cooked in a crock pot.  Was very tasty. 

[BLUEBULLS]

It depends almost solely on the bear itself. I've had decent and I've had bad.  Breakfast sausage is usually a good idea.


A friend of mine shares his bear meat with "friends he doesn't like"

[kckrawler]

My buddy shot a mountain black bear a few years ago and we grilled up some backstrap to try it...and it was great! Better than deer  I think the bears diet plays a huge role in how he'll taste, no garbage eating bear will taste good 

[turkeyfeather]

If anyone wanted to donate some to me with a good recipe then I certainly could give a more educated opinion. lol 

[bearpaw]

I grew up eating bear and have eaten it most of my adult life, one year we butchered 5 (legally tagged) bear. Most are very good eating but now and then you get a bad tasting one. People who live where bear eat dead salmon tell me you want to avoid eating bear that have been eating salmon.

Trim the fat away and eat the lean bear meat. We've eaten steaks, burger, roasts, liver, heart, jerky, many types of sausage, and even canned bear meat. We've even rendered bear fat when I was a kid and used the oil for baking and cooking, we also put bear oil on our boots for boot oil. I have since heard that the fat will deteriorate leather, but it worked pretty good back then. 

One of my favorite dishes is to slow cook a roast for about 5 hours at about 300 degrees, use plenty of veges in the roaster with a couple cups water and put some garlic slices into the meat. After cooking 5 hours throw out the cooked veges and broth, add new water and some new veges, cook another hour and enjoy your newly cooked veges and the roast. I have served it to many people who thought it was a good beef roast, no wild taste at all.


Almost forgot to mention spices, I like to put on lots of Johnnies Seasoning Salt, use whatever is your favorite. Sometimes a tablespoon or two of Franks Red Hot is good to add too.

[jackmaster]

well ma'am its like this, if you kill a young bear it is very good and it also depends on how you cook it and what you like, if you kill one and you leave a bunch of dirt hair and fat on the meat when you process it then it probably wont taste very good at all, i will tell you what, i have had a bear for a couple years now visit my place on a regular basis, if he shows up again this coming summer i will let you come and kill it, he is a big boar and looks pretty old, i would take the backstraps for steaks and process the rest, i know a guy that make the best damn terriyaki pepperoni and jalepeno cheddar summer sausage, you can pm rasbo and ask him about doug, thats the guy that makes it....soo hopefully the bear shows up and hopefully you will connect on your first bear... good luck ma'am

[h20hunter]

I have only taken one bear but have had a good enough experience at the table I'll be hunting hard again for the next one. Folks that know more than I do have told me that the bear, more so than other game, is what he eats. My bear was a boar of mature age that lived in an area with plenty of deer, grasses, and most of all.....blackberries. When I opened him up his gut was nothing but berries. I had steak, breakfast sausage links, grind (mixed with pork and pork fat) for general use, and pep sticks. The steaks have the same consistency as beef. The texture is very similiar. The flavor was slightly sweet and not gamey at all. The breakfast links cook up kind of like blood sausage....very dense and rich. We eat a lot of game in my house and the bear meat quickly became looked forward to like the venison.

One other thing I think contributed to the quality of meat is shot placement. I took my bear high in shoulder/spine. He never had a chance to take a second breath, run, or get that hormone dump of fleeing from the shot. I can't help but think a quick death played a part in the table quality as well.

If you are interested in hunting bear but concerned about the meat then I would say good on you. Sportsman should think it through all the way before pulling the trigger. You can always have summer sausage or other processed meats made with it and you will have plenty of usable meat.

Good luck this coming year and go shoot a fatty!

[h20hunter]

Oh....and take Jackmaster up on that because if you don't myself and a few others will gladly do it!

[bearpaw]

Another interesting tidbit of info:

Back when I ran a lot of bear with dogs, I often expected a bear that ran a long distance to taste poorly. I was never able to determine that it caused them to taste bad. I think the most important thing was getting them gutted and the meat cooled as quick as possible.

[crschralping]

Bear is delicious! I get all mine made into ground meat with no fat added. I debone and remove as much fat as possible before I take it to the butcher.  Goes great in chili, spagetti, tacos stuff like that. I was told always cook it well done or you could get triganosis(sp?) so thats why I do all ground meat. Bear thats been eating berries is going to taste better than a bear eating skunk cabage...

My girl took a big crock pot full of bear chili to a pot luck, didn't tell anyone and it was all gone in about an hour, she got many compliments. She told a few people after some were pissed some were stoked

[bearpaw]

Bear thats been eating berries is going to taste better than a bear eating skunk cabage...

Good point, one year I shot a bear in montana out of the skunk cabbage patches, was the worst bear I ever killed. I couldn't eat it, I tried cooking it for the hounds, they wouldn't eat it either. (that's amazing, never seen any other meat the hounds wouldn't eat) Had to throw it out.

Trichinosis
Another good point. I remember a University of Montana study, I beleive found 14% of bear and 47% of cougar tested carried the parasite. To be safe you should cook all meat eaters well.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichinosis

Trichinosis

Trichinosis, also called trichinellosis, or trichiniasis, is a parasitic disease caused by eating raw or undercooked pork or wild game infected with the larvae of a species of roundworm Trichinella spiralis, commonly called the trichina worm. There are eight Trichinella species; five are encapsulated and three are not.[1] Only three Trichinella species are known to cause trichinosis: T. spiralis, T. nativa, and T. britovi.[1]
 
Between 2002 and 2007, 11 cases were reported to CDC each year on average in the United States;[2] these were mostly the result of eating undercooked game, bear meat, or home-reared pigs. It is common in developing countries where meat fed to pigs is raw or undercooked, but many cases also come from developed countries in Europe and North America, where raw or undercooked pork and wild game may be consumed as delicacies.[3]

Food preparation
 Larvae may be killed by the heating or irradiation of raw meat. Freezing is only usually effective for T. spiralis, since other species, such as T. nativa, are freeze resistant and can survive long-term freezing.[13]
 - All meat (including pork) can be safely prepared by cooking to an internal temperature of 165°F (74°C) or more for 15 seconds or more.
 - Wild game: Wild game meat must be cooked thoroughly (see meat preparation above) Freezing wild game does not kill all trichinosis larval worms. This is because the worm species that typically infests wild game can resist freezing.
 - Pork: Freezing cuts of pork less than 6 inches thick for 20 days at 5 °F (−15 °C) or three days at −4 °F (−20 °C) kills T. spiralis larval worms; but this will not kill other trichinosis larval worm species, such as T. nativa, if they have infested your pork food supply (which is unlikely).
 
Pork can be safely cooked to a slightly lower temperature provided that the internal meat temperature is at least as hot for at least as long as listed in the USDA table below.[26] Nonetheless, it is prudent to allow a margin of error for variation in internal temperature within a particular cut of pork, which may have bones that affect temperature uniformity. In addition, your thermometer has measurement error that must be considered. Cook pork for significantly longer and at a higher uniform internal temperature than listed here to be safe.

[KenPCPilot]

I used most beef and pork crockpot recipies turn out very well.  I was very surprised my bear roasts and the sausage were delicious.  Little game taste much much less than venison.  I always used a crockpot as it is a drier meat with much less fat content then commerical beef or pork so slower lower temperature cooking is best. as previously posted throughly cook the meat due to risk of trichanosis.  enjoy

[jackmaster]

one thing i did like about a young bear is that it tastes and looks alot like roast beef, damn i am getn hungry

[S&W38spc]

Well jackmaster I might have to take you up on that. My dad would probably come with me though. I never see bear usually where we go. Could you possibly be the nicest person to offer to me to come hunt on your property??  I doubt it. 

[Russ McDonald]

I got to get going to get my first bear...I have never really devoted much time to just hunting bear.  I guess this coming year I should start. 

[jackmaster]

Well jackmaster I might have to take you up on that. My dad would probably come with me though. I never see bear usually where we go. Could you possibly be the nicest person to offer to me to come hunt on your property??  I doubt it. 

i like to think i am a nice guy sometimes no that would be cool for your dad to come with you, it isnt very often that a dad would get to see his baby girl get to shoot her first bear, where do you normally hunt bear, if you dont mind me askn, have you seen much bear sighn where you do hunt, if you hunt heavily wooded areas you will find it is alot harder to see bear, cleacuts with alot of feed would be a good spot to hang out in the evnings or mornings, its to bad we lost baiting cause i could set you and your dad up closer to your house, i noticed you live in centralia, i live in graham so it will be a little bit of a drive, but when he shows up he hangs out for a few days down by the lake and then leaves for a day or two and then comes back, well keep your fingers crossed hopefully he will show up again...

[h20hunter]

Awesome.....when the time comes the celebratory thread will be great. Camo....I'd for sure take your dad along. One....memories can't be made later on. Two.....them bear are dense and heavy. Three......got to get it cleaned and cooled. Four......you can't shoot and run camera at the same time! Good luck and please keep us posted.

[gasman]

Got my first bear this year up in Alaska in the spring.
Never tried it before so I had no idea if I was going to like it or not, but I would not let it go to waste either way.

I cut the tenderloins and had them with some eggs the following morning and it was 

But the rest of the meat had a flavor that was familiar but not on the top of my list. I could not place the flavor at first and then it hit me.... Liver. The meat has a liver flavor to it. If you like liver then your golden but I don't care for liver to it was not on my highest desire list of game meat.

I did make some pep, SS and bocworth with it. It helped the flavor but still had that slight liver flavor in it.

Its all but gone now except for a 2 packs of bocworth and one roll of SS. The bocworth is being made up this weekend with some Jumbulia

[JohnVH]

I dont really like liver, but LOVE bear, it all depends where they live and what they eat.

[WSU]

I have only eaten 4 or 5 bears, so I don't have a ton of experience.  I have found that the fat is very gamey tasting.  The meat itself is good, but I would make sure that you trim all fat from the meat.

[ICEMAN]

Bear fat is treasured by bakers for its excellent baking quality.

[S&W38spc]

No  I don't see enough bear sign where we hunt to hunt them. The last bear droppings I seen was about 5 years ago! I tell ya, my dad swears there's animals here but ive went a couple years with out seeing ANYTHING!

Well jackmaster I might have to take you up on that. My dad would probably come with me though. I never see bear usually where we go. Could you possibly be the nicest person to offer to me to come hunt on your property??  I doubt it. 

i like to think i am a nice guy sometimes no that would be cool for your dad to come with you, it isnt very often that a dad would get to see his baby girl get to shoot her first bear, where do you normally hunt bear, if you dont mind me askn, have you seen much bear sighn where you do hunt, if you hunt heavily wooded areas you will find it is alot harder to see bear, cleacuts with alot of feed would be a good spot to hang out in the evnings or mornings, its to bad we lost baiting cause i could set you and your dad up closer to your house, i noticed you live in centralia, i live in graham so it will be a little bit of a drive, but when he shows up he hangs out for a few days down by the lake and then leaves for a day or two and then comes back, well keep your fingers crossed hopefully he will show up again...

[billythekidrock]

Yep you read that right. Ive never tried bear meat. Does it taste like chicken  or does it have a game taste..

Better than chicken, better than deer and better than most elk. Not better than prime rib though.

[jackmaster]

No  I don't see enough bear sign where we hunt to hunt them. The last bear droppings I seen was about 5 years ago! I tell ya, my dad swears there's animals here but ive went a couple years with out seeing ANYTHING!

Well jackmaster I might have to take you up on that. My dad would probably come with me though. I never see bear usually where we go. Could you possibly be the nicest person to offer to me to come hunt on your property??  I doubt it. 

i like to think i am a nice guy sometimes no that would be cool for your dad to come with you, it isnt very often that a dad would get to see his baby girl get to shoot her first bear, where do you normally hunt bear, if you dont mind me askn, have you seen much bear sighn where you do hunt, if you hunt heavily wooded areas you will find it is alot harder to see bear, cleacuts with alot of feed would be a good spot to hang out in the evnings or mornings, its to bad we lost baiting cause i could set you and your dad up closer to your house, i noticed you live in centralia, i live in graham so it will be a little bit of a drive, but when he shows up he hangs out for a few days down by the lake and then leaves for a day or two and then comes back, well keep your fingers crossed hopefully he will show up again...

your a dedicated women I can tell you that, if I have hunted a place for 2 years without seeing anything then I damn sure wouldn't be making it 3 years in there, I think it's time for you and your dad to find a new spot, there is a lot of help on this site just ask, I know a few spots that I don't hunt anymore that have plenty of deer and other critters for you to hunt, pm me if you would like more info, take care ma'am

[woodman]

No  I don't see enough bear sign where we hunt to hunt them. The last bear droppings I seen was about 5 years ago! I tell ya, my dad swears there's animals here but ive went a couple years with out seeing ANYTHING!

You should set up a trail cam or two where you dad thinks they are so that you can really know if there are bears there. I only see bear sign in the area by my cameras in the spring time. I have counted 11 different bears within a quarter mile radius of my cameras in a season with no dropping by my cameras. I too like the taste of bears and generally have bears sausage a few times a week.

[JackOfAllTrades]

I think the most important thing was getting them gutted and the meat cooled as quick as possible.
 
One of my favorite dishes is to slow cook a roast for about 5 hours at about 300 degrees, use plenty of veges in the roaster with a couple cups water and put some garlic slices into the meat. After cooking 5 hours throw out the cooked veges and broth, add new water and some new veges, cook another hour and enjoy your newly cooked veges and the roast.

crschralping on Today at 07:29:52 AM 
Bear thats been eating berries is going to taste better than a bear eating skunk cabage...

 

[JackOfAllTrades]

I'll have to agree with getting the meat cooled as soon as possible, and a slow cooker or Crock pot is the best way to get a bear roast palitable as any Herbivore can be. Trim the fat!  But as Dale suggests water as the heat/juice medium, I use a good Alaskan Amber or an IPA (Beer). 
 
I haven't actually hunted bear for a few years. Sort of looking for that big trophy larger than the rug on my wall. But 2013 could bring a good bear in my sights. I could have had a few this year...
 
I want peporoni to last me a year!   That's it.. A whole bear to pep and whimpies! (OK.. Maybe a couple roasts) 
-Steve