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